


Lullaby

by Kana_Go



Series: Russian to English translations [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bathing/Washing, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Psychology, Romance, Slow Build, Split Personality - kind of, Translation from Russian into English, Wakanda, breaking Winter Soldier's code
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2017-05-27
Packaged: 2018-08-28 04:58:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 59,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8432719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kana_Go/pseuds/Kana_Go
Summary: Steve's breaking the Winter Soldier's code.





	1. ZERO

**Author's Note:**

  * A translation of [Колыбельная](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/238636) by KL_KL. 



> Great thanks to beautiful leveragehunters for beta-reading!

…To change one glass cage to a thousand of others…  
(с) «Picnic»  
  
Blood is drunk with hands.  
(с) H.L. Oldy

 

 

 ZERO

 

Give him his due, Helmut Zemo never screamed. Neither with pain, nor with rage. He was really quiet, actually. He didn’t get filled with triumph and didn’t gloat. He stared into space with that calm look of someone who’s burnt from the inside. Sometimes he answered questions, but more often he didn’t and was electrocuted for it, and after every shock, barely recovered, Zemo smiled with his calm bored smile that said literally, _I don’t care about your pain_. Ross was quietly mad about this guy. Ross was pushy with him. He might be too pushy and he took the liberty of doing things which he usually tried to avoid in such situations. He didn’t want to admit that guys like this one really frightened him. Guys who had nothing to lose. You couldn’t rattle them, you couldn’t put pressure on them, you wouldn’t get any remorse from them. They really didn’t care about pain. Ross’s seen guys like this before.

This one was already dead, though still alive.

There was an impression that you could release Zemo from the holding cell, then he’d smile – and with this happy smile he’d cut his own throat.

Everett Ross would let him do it, free and easy, suggesting it would be even better for the common good, but unfortunately, he needed the bastard. One of Ross’s beliefs was that terrorists didn’t work alone. His superiors – right to the very top – had the same opinion. This goon had accomplices. There couldn’t be any other way. Someone helped him get a bomb and move it to Berlin, to coordinate his actions. It was impossible to carry out such a complicated operation within such a short time limit alone. Except, maybe, the explosion in Vienna. Ross had no problem believing that: a man had problems, so he started shooting around. Then again, Breivik…

But the rest…

Zemo had been keeping his mouth shut for almost two months. At first Ross’s people worked with him, then he took it into his own hands, although his temples ached pretty much and his own powerlessness irritated him a lot. Zemo kept quiet. Even words about his wife and son didn’t bother him – it was a dirty trick, but they had used it in despair as they ran out of other instruments. It seemed even if Congress allowed them to use a rack and lashes, it wouldn’t help. Behind those empty, deadly calm eyes nothing was left except coal-black ashes and realization that everything which could quench his thirst for revenge was already done. Ross couldn’t help but shiver a bit. No, this guy positively creeped him out.

“I need names, Helmut. And numbers. Who, ah? Coworkers? We’ll check each of them if we have to.”

“You’ve already checked all of them, Agent Ross,” was the quiet answer.

Zemo stared in front of him and his lips curved in a weak smile, as if he saw something nice rather than an angry government agent through the bulletproof glass of the special cell.

“And you found nothing. That’s why you’re here.”

The worst thing was this bastard was right. They’d already gone through his inner circle, but it only resulted in a couple of summons to the International Court for interference in their private life.

“We can check again. And again. And then their families. And then their relatives and acquaintances. And then…”

“There’re enough people in Socovia who have reasons to take revenge against the Avengers themselves,” Zemo commented quietly.

 “Very well,” Ross answered in a honey sweet voice. “I need their names. And numbers.”

Silence. A gentle smile making Ross feel in terror as if he were Agent Starling from The Silence Of The Lambs. 

“I. Need. Names!” he exploded. “Stop being so obstinate! Everything’s already over!”

“Who told you that?” It was the first time during their conversation Zemo had looked up in surprise.

Ross felt something cold in the pit of his stomach.

“What are you talking about? Ah, I guess I got it. You what, have put your pals up to some diversion? Are you going to try and escape?”

“What date is it today?” Zemo asked suddenly.

It did mean something and for some reason Ross was sure this ‘something’ was definitely some kind of ‘nothing good’. They’d have to tighten security. To triple it.

“Why does it matter to you?”

He slowly crossed his arms on his chest. Zemo gave a wider smirk.

“It’s just if my calculations are right and today is really the third of July, then it’s not me you’d better think about.”

“What does it mean?!”

Silence. A smile. Ross pressed the button frenziedly. A shock. One more. Zemo twitched in the chair, head back, and closed his eyes for a moment while he waited for the pain to recede.

“Don’t you dare to mock me!” Ross barked. “Answer! What does it mean?!”

Laughter. Quiet hoarse gurgling. The words that followed were full of almost friendly sympathy.

“Hope Captain Rogers will enjoy my little gift. Give my best to him.”

Ross turned pale, and Zemo smiled to him. Gently and terrifyingly. 

 *

 Somewhere in a totally different place the darkness in the depths of the armchair stirred. The light from the screen of an ancient TV set that was droning on about tomorrow’s weather illuminated a sturdy middle-aged man who was watching a wall clock. The man got up heavily and went to an empty adjoining room, limping a bit. There he kneeled and pried up the planks of the old white-worn hardwood floor with the blade of his knife. Finally, he managed to raise a square of connected planks and revealed a hiding place in the floor.

There was a box there.

This box was brought to him by a delivery guy about two months ago when shocking news about the Avengers, the Accords and the capture of Helmut Zemo was still fresh. There were two items in the box. One of them was an old red notebook with a darkened star on its cover, and the other – a letter with some instructions. Eight weeks had been left till the appointed time. Now it was one hour.

The man took the letter, went to the bathroom, read the instructions once more, chuckled sadly a couple of times and set a lighter to it.

A ghostly pale rectangle of a computer screen glowed from the far corner of the dark room. The man’s fingers, already twisted by arthritis, started chattering on the keyboard unexpectedly sprightly. That chatter continued for a long while – for the rest of the time.

  _Семнадцать… Печь… Возвращение на Родину…_

Enter.

The man tipped back heavily on the back of his chair and lit a cigarette with evident pleasure. Of course if someone could see it. The house was empty, though it seemed as if besides drafts, echoes of someones' voices were still wandering around it. The man was looking at the screen, taking one pull after another, rolling acrid smoke on his tongue and expelling it out of his nostrils. Then he crushed the stub out on the tabletop. His long look slid over the row of photos on the book shelf.

And then calmly, without hesitation he stuck his service gun into his mouth.

 *

Steve woke up to a phone trill just after 5 a.m. and thought hazily that in New York it was only midnight or so. And only then he realized why he’d thought about it.

It was THAT ONE number.

“I’m listening, Tony.”

At first Steve had a glimpse of desperate hope that Stark was calling to congratulate him, although he quickly put this thought aside.

Too early.

“Data on the Winter Soldier was leaked to WikiLeaks.” Tony’s voice sounded fast and brisk. “They’ve already spread around the net in five minutes. We’ll clean everything up, but for god’s sake, get him off the streets and check the damned code.”

 _Thank you_ said by a bewildered fully awake Steve was already met with silence.

How easy, it turned out, it was to break the life which had almost returned to normal with just one phrase. Data on the Soldier got on the net… He realized he was sitting motionless with his phone in his hand for several minutes staring into the darkness when he heard the sound of an incoming message.

A line of words. Cyrillic.

 *

 T’Challa watched them from the centre of the room. A little further doctors crowded with their clipboards clutched to their chests, and it wasn’t clear at all who they were more afraid of – their king or the man who was firmly fastened with belts to the inside of the cryochamber.  The glass hood was lowered, cold was far gone and Bucky’s skin had got its natural healthy colour back long ago. Steve knew if he touched his friend’s right arm, it’d be warm. He tried not to look at the metal stub of the left one more often than was necessary.

Steve waited for the cardiograph to beep more rapidly. The rhythm of Bucky’s breathing changed. His eyelids flickered.

Bucky was waking up. Steve briskly touched his friend’s real shoulder and started reading from his phone screen.

“Желание. Ржавый…”

Steve ordered himself not to be distracted by the accelerated rhythm of Bucky’s heart. He tried to rap out his words without stumbling over the Russian. Bucky started tossing and whispered something in protest. A groan fell from his lips, he started turning and pulling the straps, and then it occurred to Steve if Bucky still had his left arm he would get free without effort. When Steve said “Рассвет” Bucky started screaming and only through tremendous force of will did Steve keep talking. When the words dried up Bucky suddenly got quiet. Then he opened his eyes.

Steve carefully approached him and called:

“Bucky.”

His friend stared into the void with unseeing eyes like he'd once done on the table under Hydra’s straps, and this association came at such a wrong time that Steve tried to chase it away and called louder:

“Bucky!”

No answer. Steve closed his eyes and clenched his teeth tightly. He already knew exactly what he was going to hear when he asked:

“Солдат?”

He said this word in Russian, too. It was in the message. It was necessary.

“Я жду приказаний,” the hoarse reply followed.

Steve’s heart skipped a beat.

“Bucky.” He came close and looked into Bucky’s eyes. They were bleary, with pupils dilated, as if Bucky was under the influence of cocaine, but their expression wasn’t blank. Vice versa. There was cold and dangerous combat readiness there. Steve put his hand on Bucky’s neck and turned his head to himself a bit.

“Buck, come on! Look at me. Do you remember me? Bucky, hey. It’s me.”

Bucky didn’t manage to focus on him immediately, but when he did he stared at him hard and without blinking. Without recognition. 

“Who’s Bucky?” he asked calmly. After a short pause he frowned a bit and added: “Is he a target?”

He took a chance and pulled the straps, checking the degree of freedom. The straps began to crack.

“Don’t.” Steve touched his shoulder keeping him in place. “Get back to sleep, Soldier.”

It wasn’t easy to say the last phrase, but Bucky stopped yanking the straps and just looked obediently and ghastly with those frozen eyes somewhere past Steve. The glass went up and Steve saw, just like two months ago, with hidden dull pain, freezing steam veiling his friend’s body and covering his face with a thin layer of ice. 

 *

 He sent the message "The code's right" to Stark, but not immediately. Before, he sat in the hall for a long time with the mobile in his hand. Black people in white coats scurried past him, bringing to his mind silly pictures of coffee with cream. At first he needed to believe that it'd really happened. Stark sent him the code to the Winter Soldier, to the personal Bucky Barnes's madness, just via text. And he said it was already on the net. Already on the net...

Steve imagined boys shouting these words, mangling unfamiliar Russian, as a kind of a new jump-rope rhyme. How these words would gradually interweave into songs, sound in standuppers' jokes, in TV-shows... Even if Stark cleaned everything up, you still can't stop everyone's mouth. And even if people didn't believe in their authenticity... it still might be the code to the Winter Soldier. And this only "might be" will be enough to spare.

Such an appealing idea... Too appealing to pass by.

The words will sound. After scandals and fuss over the split in Avengers it'll be a sensation, and two months is too short a time for things to settle. For the all-seeing and omnipresent Internet not to respond, not to spread these words like disease, making them another meme, a new short-term fun.

What an appealing idea! Their own Winter Soldier!

Everyone's.

An RC toy owned by crowd who would yank a remote control from one another's arms.

Steve felt the first wave of icy shivering, locked his arms and pressed them to his head throbbing with tension.

Stark and Vision's time would be better spent looking for the source of the leak than hunting the code about the net. Though... Steve already knew the source. Socovia. And it was Zemo who did a job... an avenger who was punishing Avengers. He deserved a standing ovation. He shot straight like only the last survivor could do. He was the very wicked who for the purpose of a single videotape had  known no rest. Steve couldn't make himself hate the man, although he tried his best. Somewhere deep down he'd waited for something like this for a long time. Because those burnt inside are the most suitable to be executioners, increasing the number of their victims to hundreds and thousands.

But even that didn't matter anymore. Another thing mattered. There were so many white coats in sight... too many people. And each of them... each one could...

He sent the message to Stark and put his face in his hands.

Belatedly, he started shivering violently. 

 *

 "It may be for the best," T'Challa remarked.

Steve seldom saw him in his traditional robes, and Panther made quite an impression in his long black tunic embroidered in three rows of cowrie shells along the neck line.

"Now we have something to work with. When he's the Winter Soldier..."

"No," Steve said bluntly.

He was looking out the window where ragged clouds were caressing the gigantic stone cat's belly, making it glisten and spark in the sunshine. There were only two of them in the hallway now, and like this, in private, T'Challa asked Steve to address him simply, without unnecessary titles . Panther waited for him to continue, and Steve struggled to arrange his floundering thoughts.

"I have a request," he said quietly.

"Go ahead."

"Get people out of this wing. Leave only those guards you personally know, no more than five people. All research work with Bucky should be stopped immediately. I'll be the only one to work with him."

T'Challa said nothing and definitely waited for explanations. Steve swallowed a bitter lump in his throat and took a deep breath.

"If I can't find the way to neutralize it, Bucky will never leave this place. I've already broken his programme twice. The Winter Solder reacts to me. It means there's a chance I'll manage to build on that success and learn to reach Bucky. And I'm the only one here who can stop him. Besides you, of course."

T'Challa stretched his thick lips in a mirthless smile.

"Do you want to get through to him? I'm afraid in his case it won't be easy."

"Yes, I remember it," Steve nodded. He'd personally checked all research reports for two months. "Meds wouldn't work. They're metabolized too fast, no lasting effect. Not hypnosis - the programme is wired deeper and more securely. It won't work. We'd have to wire a deactivation code into him in the same way they wired the programme. I've already said I won't and I won't let anyone fry his brain. Even if this is the only way to do the trick, no one will torture him anymore."

"We've got nothing else so far."

"Exactly," Steve agreed. "That's why it's me who'll work with him from now."

"Okay," T'Challa nodded. "You'll work. I'll meet your needs. But if it's not a secret... If everything we've tried didn't work, what are you going to do?"

Steve remained silent for a long time, feeling unpleasant thick anxiety in the pit of his stomach. It seemed to him if he gave voice to his idea, it would lose its power and sound completely ridiculous, destroying fragile hope. But he took a risk.

"I want to find a 'lullaby'," Steve said. "This is the key. The way we can reach Bucky through the Soldier and teach him to wake out of his trance. The key isn't universal. Sort of an algorithm of words and actions from a specific person. I've already seen such a thing. Both establishing contact and the result."

"Deactivation through the human factor?"

"I saw a fragile girl doing this with a huge green monster," Steve smiled sadly.

"I believe you. But in order to break through his code... it's wired deep. Into his subconscious. Anything can happen, though. Our people say, only 'I' is able to temperate itself. It's only Barnes himself who will be able to cope with the Winter Soldier inside."

"Your people are very wise."

"If you manage to neutralize him and follow up a success, you'll be tied to him. Do you understand that?"

Steve shook his head.

"It's a temporary measure. We'll have to rid him of the code anyway, but first, I need something capable of stopping him if we have to. I think Bucky also wishes something like that existed."

"You aren't going to tell him?"

This question was painful and Steve hung his head, trying to hide how hard T'Challa's words hit him.

"Not yet," Steve answered. "He's already had enough problems without us waking him for bad news."

"He won't be thrilled when he finds out about it," Panther observed with not-so-hidden irony.

Steve nodded.

"Yes. But I'll try to explain the necessity of it to him." He was quiet for a while. "How much time do I have?"

T'Challa shrugged.

"'till you give up. I'll check the results personally. You'll get everything you need for your work. I'm not omnipotent, though, keep it in mind, please. And one more thing, you can't bring him out of cryosleep more than once a day. Bad for him."

"Check the results?"

"It's me who will read the code to him. If you're able to stop him when someone else gives orders, it'll be a victory."

Steve nodded.

"I agree."

*

He stepped into the room confidently and typed the turn-off code for freezing on the screen.

He needed no notes anymore, he remembered the code by heart.

Lullaby. For the first time, Natasha and Hulk succeeded unintentionally, but still she and Banner spent two long months of training to follow up an accidental success.

He succeeded, too. Twice. Steve still considered that case on the bridge a successful attempt, because that time the Soldier spoke to him for the first time. Spoke and hesitated, even if only for a second, but the programme has failed for that second. He had to try.

When living warmth started flowing through Bucky's body once again, Steve thought joylessly, _Well, Buck... It's time to get to know your Hulk._

 TBC

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Russian words and phrases:  
> Семнадцать… Печь… Возвращение на Родину… – Seventeen… Furnace… Homecoming…  
> Желание. Ржавый – Longing. Rusted.  
> Рассвет – Daybreak.  
> Солдат – Soldier  
> Я жду приказаний – Ready to comply.


	2. STAGE ONE (A)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: angst, mention of suicidal thoughts

STAGE ONE

"Я жду приказаний."

He's sitting opposite. His hand's on the table, his misty eyes are staring the other way. There's an impenetrable thick wall of fog behind his eyes, but their expression's predatory like an owl's. He's hardly blinking and those times he is he's doing it slowly, like he's dopey. There's a white pulsimeter on his index finger, the screen's beeping rhythmically, almost inaudibly. His pulse is steady, as if he's sleeping. Deep breaths.

"Do you know me?"

"Yes."

"Who am I?"

"Captain America. The sixth level. Failured mission."

This answer's like a hit to Steve's chest, but he forbids himself to show it.

"Do you want to finish it?"

"Already irrelevant."

"What's your name?"

"I'm the Winter Soldier." He says it dully, tonelessly, and with an apparent reluctance, as if his own voice sounds unpleasant to him.

"This is a code name. And I've asked your name. Have you got a name?"

Silence.

"Answer me."

"Irrelevant," he says and... his intonation's already different. Dryer.

"Where did you grow up? You had to grow up somewhere."

"Irrelevant."

"Who were you before you became the Winter Soldier?"

No answer.

 

*

 

Steve calls him ‘Солдат’ only in Russian. One of those days he tried to call him "Bucky", to shout until he was heard, down to a direct order, "Remember who you are!" But the only result was the Soldier falling mute as a fish. He stopped answering questions altogether, as if he stopped understanding human speech. As for the orders concerning physical activity, he followed them obedietly – ‘stand’, ‘sit’. But he didn't talk. That's why Steve had to put up with this ‘Солдат’. But Lord knows...

 

*

 

"How old are you?"

"Irrelevant."

He wasn't Bucky. Steve had to constantly remind himself of it. Though he had Bucky's body, Bucky's voice, Bucky's eyes... No, the eyes were different. As if something cold and indifferent had possessed Bucky. Or as if it was Bucky's evil twin who sat in front of Steve.

"It's relevant for me. If you don't know exact numbers, give approximate ones."

"About thirty."

"Good. I'm going to read you an age and you try to remember the events of every period. Got it?"

A careful nod.

"You're five years old. What do you remember?"

No answer.

 

*

 

"I'm going to read you a list of names. You must say if you know any."

A nod.

"James Buchanan Barnes. Тimothy Dugan. Winifred Snow. Clark Gable. Dolores Carmody. Jim Morita. Marlene Dietrich. Gabe Jones. Howard Stark. Pam Winnerby. Carole Lombard. Steve Rogers. Monica..."

"Steven Grant Rogers," the Soldier says.

For one second Steve thinks – he did it! Then he quickly realizes he's wrong.

"Know this name?"

"Yes."

"How do you know it? Whose name is it?"

The Soldier considers it for a while. His eyes start darting, the pulse on the screen beeps faster.

"Destabilization message," he says hoarsely. "Memory wipe required. Destabilization message..."

"Enough!" Steve interrupts. "Look at me. Calm down. Take a deep breath. That's it. We'll continue tomorrow."

He's so much about to howl.  


*  


Every time Steve watched that stage with a heavy heart. Recovery. It took Bucky twenty minutes to recover from cryosleep. Or so; every time was different. Steve watched. He watched the tube filling with oxygen, the temperature rising, the streams of air – drying cold. Everything inside was cloaked in white fog and it hid Bucky from view for a long time, ‘til the glass went down. Steve watched the tendrils of that fog seeping outside and dissolving. After the glass was down, three to five minutes were left to Bucky's waking up.

It seemed strange, but Steve didn't need to check life-support equipment to see and feel that. Steve just knew, before Bucky wasn't there, then - he was. Nothing changed in his appearance, his eyelids didn't flicker, but guided by some subtle signs, Steve felt it as if a sort of inner switch clicked on.

Bucky was here.    

Steve started reading. He had to catch a precise moment to make the shift painless. Sometimes he managed to do it. Sometimes he didn't.

"No! No, Steve, please!"

_It has to be done. Trust me, Buck, it's going to be fine._

He screamed every time. Thrashed like in a bad nightmare. If he managed to wake up earlier, his eyes, mad with terror, darted around the laboratory and his screams formed the words.

"Don't! Stop! Steve!"

Steve didn't let himself lose words. He only wanted to finish it as soon as possible, but... He couldn't read too fast. It was important to keep up a clear rhythm because if he lost it, he'd have to start from the very beginning.

In those moments he felt like a torturer and almost welcomed the Soldier's icy indifference. 

 

*

 

"Я жду приказаний."

The Soldier was staring past Steve. Into the void, as if he weren't there or were looking into his own depths, known only to him. His voice was dry and emotionless. It seemed the Soldier didn't have emotional intelligence or it was disordered. But when Steve managed to catch his gaze and lock it on himself, he could read its expression. It was feeble like an echo, but still there.

 _You're not playing by the rules_ , this gaze said. _And if you don't know how to handle me, I'll bite you._  

 

*

 

"Destabilization message..."

"Who's Steven Grant Rogers?"

The Soldier's looking past him, his fist's clenched, the vein's pulsing on his forehead.

"Destabilization message. Memory wipe..."

"Look at me! Who is Steven Grant Rogers?!"

The Soldier sharply raises his head, with fire flaring in his eyes. Fury breaks loose from him like a lash.

"SHUT UP!"

The table's kicked aside, the Soldier's on the move and Steve blocks a hit, throwing his body, thrumming with tension, on the floor and realizing...

'Destabilization message' is a signal like pain or fear. It's a lash shooting up into the air before falling on somebody's head or back. The Soldier fights blindly and madly, and Steve hardly manages to shove him down to the floor and shout the order "Stop!" several times before the man stills in his arms.

This message is like a warning about an attack on the programme. Fury is the programme's way of protecting itself.

But why did it work that time?  God, why?    

 

*

 

"Destabilization message..."

Yet again. Steve helplessly threw the notebook on the table. He pressed his fingers into his temples, listening to loud silence. He didn't want to risk raising destabilization to aggression anymore and he was rapidly running out of ideas.

Steve thought it would be easy to order ‘remember me’ or ‘remember yourself’ when he had the right to give orders. At first he was even a bit afraid to take too much advantage of his status. Idiot. It didn't work. Whether he read the code or not, he couldn't break through the trance.

In all that time he had never seen Bucky. Only the Soldier's cloudy eyes and the emptiness in them.

"Did I fail the task?" the Soldier asked breaking the silence.

Speak of the devil.

"Yes," Steve snapped, angrily and bitingly, and forcefully ran his hands over his face. Then he raised his eyes and... And he saw it.

The Soldier nodded a few times, like, yes, I got it. He was staring at the table with the look of a cornered animal, readily and resignedly. As if he were waiting for something.

For punishment. It dawned on Steve. The Soldier failed to execute the order. And he's waiting for someone to punish him for that. Waiting for him. Steve.   

He was overcome by painful numbness. He felt the hollow dragging emptiness, very similar to both pain and pity, at the bottom of his heart. Its cold tentacles sprawled inside, filled his chest and stomach, spread over his limbs. And it was the first time Steve had clearly heard the thought in his mind. Everyone's a victim here. Socovian lieutenant-colonel, mad with grief. Warrior T'Challa, rocking his father's dead body on his lap after the terrorist act. Orphan Tony Stark. Wounded Rhodes. Scarlet Witch, dangerous for the entire world. Bucky in the grip of Hydra...

The Winter Soldier. A puppet in many artful strategists' hands. Wheyfaced, ready to take punishment for his inability to obey his, Steve's, order.

Like a trained dog who, with its ears close to its head, is obediently waiting for a beating.

Steve abruptly leaned forward and his hand confidently covered the Soldier's forearm, making the man to raise his dull, wary eyes.     

"Nothing wrong with you having failed," Steve rapped out. "Do you understand me? I'm not going to punish you. The task's difficult, you won't get it right the first time. Let's try again?"

He removed his hand and noticed that the Soldier relaxed a bit, tension left his shoulders and back.

"The essence of the task," he said quietly and carefully, raising his head, and Steve felt impressed once again by that great difference between their voices. "What is it?"

"When we get through it, you'll understand everything."

The Soldier nodded docilely without asking for details. But in his dull eyes Steve could catch some expression, a weak glimpse of emotion similar to helpless desperation.

 _I can't understand what you want from me_ , that look said.  

 

*

 

Steve thought about it a lot. He wrote variants in his notebook, crossed them out and thought some more.

He didn't believe in hypnosis. A conventionalist, a practical man, a realist. He didn't believe. Or, rather, he didn't believe in hypnosis with pendulums and finger snapping, not reinforced by the magic of experts in intricate illusions, such as Scarlet Witch or Loki. Even then, the latter's hypnosis could be undone by a good blow to the head.

If everything were so easy in this case... No, there was something different here.

The code words... They were unlikely to mean something in isolation from one another. Besides, when they had been installed into Bucky's head, he hardly knew Russian well enough to understand their sense or implied meanings.  

So, sure enough, the code. Either each word or expression had its own association attached to it or it was all about rhythm, word length, accented syllable location... On the other hand, one didn't exclude the other.

Those words cast Bucky into a trance. And for some reason that trance wasn't connected with James Barnes's memory and personality. As if Bucky were sleeping or under the influence of drugs. More than that, both those states were in violent conflict with each other. Steve had asked enough questions to understand – the Soldier didn't know anything about Bucky. Even if the name awoke some associations in him, he didn't identify himself with James Barnes. 'Who are you? What's your name? You're fifteen – what do you remember? What was your father's name? In what city did you grow up?' Questions like this gave rise to doubt, abashment and confusion. The Soldier didn't like that state and aggressively so. He began to glare dangerously.

But anyway, there were still two main kinds of reactions. 

In the former case, it seemed as though the Soldier went into interrogation mode. He drew into his shell, retreated deep into himself, stopped paying attention to Steve and got away from what was actually happening. Steve thought he could start breaking the Soldier's fingers without any response. However, the man did execute commands concerning physical activity, as Steve had already checked earlier.

In the latter case, 'Destabilization message' followed. As if the Soldier had been trained to report on the system malfunctions, and then he started to require a wipe. It seemed to Steve – not because he really needed or wanted that damned wipe, but just because it was his way of informing about a failure. A fit.

An amock.

In that state he attacked, blindly and absolutely uncontrollably. When that happened, Steve couldn't see any understanding on his face – he looked like a gadfly-bitten horse who's madly rushing towards an abyss. At these moments the Soldier's grey eyes flashed with anger and he attacked screaming like he was trying to quiet Steve's words with his blows. For the record, his attacks were bad, affected by the lack of the arm.       

But he still attacked. As if he hurt. Or even didn't hurt, but for some reason it was unbearable.

Steve had already learned to listen to his 'Messages' and steer the conversation in a different direction, but gradually fewer and fewer directions remained.

He had one hesitant idea. Too crazy to seriously grasp it earlier, but now only crazy ones were left. Both times, when Bucky in Soldier mode recognized him or was close to it, it had happened during the battle. After a long fight. It raised the theory that...

The programme destabilization was activated by adrenaline. Only in the heat of fighting it was possible to make Bucky hear, when adrenaline levels in his blood were off the charts and the programme started to glitch.

That meant... Steve needed to induce it.

Draw the fire upon himself.  

 

*

 

"Я жду приказаний"

Steve drew a deep breath, stood in front of him and ordered:

"Attack me. I'm your mission."

And the Soldier lunged at him so violently, as if he were just waiting for this.

From a punch to the stomach everything went dark before Steve's eyes.

"Bucky!" he yelled blocking the blows without fighting back.

The Soldier threw him across the laboratory and Steve crashed on the floor, knocking off stands with tubes. Shards of glass scattered all over the floor and the Solder was going barefoot on them without paying any attention to pain, leaving bloody footprints...

"Bucky, wake up!"

...until he caught Steve's neck with his right hand and raised him close to his face.

"Bucky..." Steve croaked. He knew if he didn't kick the Soldier aside he'd pass out. "Bucky..."

Shouting and clattering came to his ears seemingly from far away. Then they were surrounded by barrels of rifles, glass crunched under boots, and the Soldier, distracted, unclenched his fingers a bit and gave Steve the chance to wheeze out:

"Stop."

 

*

 

"If this is what your plan really is, it's doomed to failure. Besides, I won't let you fight in the lab."

T'Challa looked tired. Steve could understand him. These days His Majesty appeared in the compound very seldom – Black Panther was chasing poachers. It was the season. Before those poachers used to be mostly residents of nearby countries ruined by civil wars. They sought animal skins, tusks and wood. Now, after Wakanda had entered the international arena, considerably more vibranium seekers of all nationalities were roaming through the woods.

T'Challa was extremely short of time, but still came in person to make sense of the situation.

"It was me who ordered him to attack. I thought this way I'd manage to reach him."

Bucky slept in the cryochamber once again. He'd allowed the doctors to seat him on the couch and clean his feet. He hadn't shown any kinds of aggression and hadn't tried to hurt anybody. By the way, swallowing almost didn't hurt Steve anymore, either.      

"May I voice my thoughts on the matter?" T'Challa waited for Steve to nod and then continued. He spoke slowly and steadily, weighing each word. "You're moving in the wrong direction. He says he waits for your orders and you obey. But he's like a jinn. If someone else summons him, he'll fulfill his new master's wishes and you'll lose your privilege to give orders."

"I know," Steve answered instantly. "That's why I decided to do it in the first place. When I was his mission, I managed to reach him. I thought the answer might lie somewhere here. Otherwise, there are no results at all. When I start getting closer to Bucky, he falls silent like during questioning. Or reports a destabilization message, flies into a rage and attacks me."

T'Challa smiled sadly.

"Your friend acts as if he dreams," he observed softly. "And when you call him, he begins to wake up and attacks you to prevent you from waking him."

"Why?"

"Apparently, because the reality in which he's about to wake up is much worse than his dream."

"The best anti-hacking protection," Steve shook his head. "What could they have done to him to make him see the Winter Soldier mode as the only safe one?"

"Sure you want to know it?"

"No. I have a fertile imagination." Steve paused on the phrase. "The Winter Soldier was born on an operating table. We think it's impossible to imagine a person without past. But that's who he is. He either can't or doesn't want to know who he was before."

"It may be simpler," Panther shrugged in response to Steve's surprised look.

By the by, he had strong shoulders. They were clearly visible under a loose tunic and looked like two boulders moving beneath his skin.

"You see him as your friend's personal madness. Yet the Winter Soldier can have his own consciousness. Albeit primitive, controlled by a different nature. In this case he's got nothing to remember about his life outside the programme because he didn't exist then yet."

"Split personality?"

"Our people have the legend about Irimu, a man-eating leopard who can take human form."

"A shapeshifter," Steve realized.

"Your friend is a man in whom a beast lives. You call a human and a beast snarls in retort."

Steve chuckled bitterly. He remembered how Natasha had tried to reach Bruce Banner and had barely dodged an enraged Hulk's blow. But he'd really been going in the wrong direction all this time... There was no...

"I'll crack it," Steve said decidedly. "We'll see how the Soldier'll behave without being directed by pain. If we manage to reinforce the idea that he's handled in a different way now, it might let him shift to Bucky's consciousness."

"Or everything will get worse. He may become uncontrolled. And break loose."

"I'll hold him. That's why I'm here."

 

*

 

Today everything was different. He paused, scratching his tongue and the roof of his mouth with crisp code words, and watched helplessly how his friend was thrashing in his bonds. Today it was especially hard.

"Please!" Bucky tossed and turned. "Steve, please, don't!"

Probably, it was because of that failure...

He couldn't do it. He needed support so much and after so many defeats... he couldn't and didn't want to feel like a monster. Enough! He stopped at 'возвращение на родину', covered the distance to Bucky with one step, grabbed his shoulder and his other hand stroked the man's cold wet forehead.

Suddenly he realized – only that one step separated them from each other.

"It's over, already over, breathe," he murmured, removing fastenings from Bucky. "I won't finish the code."

Bucky was choking on the air, shivering; his eyes were bleary and exhausted.

"Why are you doing it... to me?"

"Sorry," Steve exhaled when Bucky almost fell into his arms. "Sorry. I'll tell you everything."

 

*

 

"So that's the thing." Bucky was sitting on the couch swinging his both legs in the air and fidgeting with a table-glass of sodabi, strong palm liquor. "That Socovian's got hell of a funny bone. He's presented me to all the world, huh? Generous asshole. Maybe you should play Odysseus and just seal my ears with wax?"

"It's not funny, Buck."

Steve didn't want to give the edge of his tongue to him, but it just turned out that way. Inadvertently. He didn't like Bucky's response to bad news, that dull glint in his eyes and total hopelessness in his voice, full of spleen. Steve would prefer Bucky swearing or rushing about the room to him taking a hit almost calmly, with the air of 'I thought it couldn't get any worse'.

"It's not like I'm laughing." Bucky gave a bitter joyless smile.

It was true. Bucky didn't look like a person willing to find a solution. More like a person who's already given up and just wanted all his well-wishers to leave him alone. It was agonizing to see him like that.

"If I don't find the key..."

"I got it. I'll never leave this place. Just promise you won't put a bullet in me while I'm sleeping. I want to, so to speak, be here for this if you make up your mind."

Steve closed his eyes slowly and downed the contents of his glass. He felt the mouthful of molten lead burn his gullet and fall into his stomach. But it didn't bring any relief.

"I never want to hear this from you again. Did you understand me?"

"Yes, Steve," Bucky nodded obediently.

"Are you sure they didn't wire a deactivation code into you?" Steve went back to their topic.

Bucky shook his head.

"I'm sure. Too dangerous. I could hear the word during an assignment and the programme would glitch. Several words is a more complicated case and it can work, of course, if you manage to read them while the Winter Soldier's pushing on you. So... As far as I remember, everything was handled with wiping."

"Sorry."

They fell silent for a short while.

"When you're the Winter Soldier... do you feel at least something? If you don't remember, maybe, there're any feelings?"

Bucky shook his head again. Steve didn't allow him to read his code even from paper. He was afraid Bucky might become catatonic, because in Steve's opinion, trance without order was the same as zugzwang.

"I just fall into darkness. Memories get back later. It's like dreaming, I mean... I see my body and understand what I'm doing, but it's not my understanding. And I can't control my actions. He's driven by the force of order, Steve. This is friggin' powerful stuff. Damn, I feel like a performing spaniel. They give me orders and I obey." 

Steve exhaled raggedly.

"Why didn't you come to me? Knowing about codes..."

Bucky's gaze was long and hard. Then he looked aside and emptied his glass.

"I was waiting for you," Steve insisted stubbornly. "Sam and I, we'd looked for you for two years and you couldn't be ignorant about it. Why didn't you come? Why didn't you reach out to me if everything was that serious?"

"That's why I didn't," Bucky pointed out obscurely. "I didn't want to go to nuthouse or jail."

"I'd never lock you up!"

"Who knows?" He smirked without looking at Steve. "You also didn't ask where I'd been during that explosion in Vienna, you know. Or if there was anyone who could affirm it. TV told you the Winter Soldier was guilty of it and you trusted it immediately. Rushed to check if I was in my right mind. Just like everyone else. Psych evaluation instead of questioning. I didn't perform that terrorist act, but no one cared. And to prove... No, thanks."

Steve felt burning shame in his throat. Bucky was right, he’d believed. And didn't ask. Because Bucky lived in a small apartment in Bucharest, paid for it with something. And he’d settled there long ago, seeing that he’d had to use his left arm to break his backpack out of its hiding-place. Bucky must've had a job. He’d had money. Connections. He might have had an alibi and it could’ve solved so many problems at one stroke...

"Sorry. I should've..."

Bucky's smile got bigger. It was painful to look at.

"You've already done everything you could. I'm grateful to you. But... Even if I had come," he drew a deep breath and continued already without a smile, "you'd have decided that I needed professional help. Because you wouldn't be able to deal with that on your own, and you'd hardly like my state. I lost my marbles. I have slurry and those damned code words instead of my memory. I'm in need of treatment. For my own sake. And sorry, but I had enough slaughterers in white gowns in my life to stay as far away from them as possible. Even if it's for you."

Steve stood in front of him and Bucky raised his head with obvious reluctance. He looked very pale in white and it was the first time Steve thought that the reason Bucky chose hibernation lay deeper than he supposed.

"Why didn't you admit you remembered me?"

"You're asking too many questions."

Bucky smiled again and Steve wanted to erase this smile with his fists. Or grab Bucky's undershirt and shake him. Twice.

"Dunno. I was at loss when I saw you there, so trigger-happy, in full dress and with SWAT."

"SWAT wasn't with me."

"I thought that would be better. If I had to fight you again, I'd rather fake memory loss."

Bucky lowered his head again. Lately he seldom looked directly in Steve's face when he was himself.

"I'll find a way to pull it out of you. Now we need it like never before and I won't stop till I do it."

"Don't fray your nerves, Steve," Bucky drawled tiredly. "Cripple supersoldier... who wants me like this?"

That was when Steve felt as if he were stung by a lash. He flung up his hands vexedly and smacked himself on the hips.  

"Here we've got to get to the bottom of this. Then this is the reason?" Steve waved in the direction of the cryochamber.

Bucky glanced at him, his jaw stubbornly clenched, shook his head discontentedly and his eyes said very expressively: 'Fuck you, Rogers!'. But he didn't say anything aloud and sulked so much that he unwittingly reminded Steve of the Soldier.

Suddenly he looked so tired, jaded and exhausted, and the scales fell from Steve's eyes.

Steve called himself an idiot. Twice. It didn't make him feel any better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Russian words and phrases:  
> Я жду приказаний – Ready to comply.  
> Возвращение на Родину – Homecoming.


	3. STAGE ONE (B)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still warnings for angst and mention of suicidal thoughts.

*

  
Bucky wasn't okay. Steve knew it, but only now did he begin to see clearly how much, and for the first time he was seriously afraid for his friend's sanity.

'They're not planning on taking you alive.'

'That's smart. Good strategy...'

'This doesn't have end in a fight, Buck.'

'It always ends in a fight...'

'I don't know if I'm worth all this...'

It was a victim who was sitting in front of Steve.

Victimization. It seemed they called it so. Bucky could pretend everything was fine. He could joke, smile. But... He was a victim all that time, since the prison camp in Austria till his escape from the cell in Berlin. Worse. He felt like a victim and an executioner at the same time. After he'd gotten back his memories he shut down. No... even worse. He fell into searing hopelessness. Realization that he couldn't be normal. That he wouldn't be able to live like other people anymore. 

For some reason Bucky’s quietness didn't alert him. Bucky’s silence was bad, oppressive. Now he could easily count pi to its 100th digit from memory, describe territory, share data or even remember good old times. But he didn't talk about himself. About his present self. Like Bucky's throat was compressed and it was as hard to express as to push a rock uphill only to have it roll down. Bucky didn't talk to him even when everything became almost normal. Though... He had just said it himself. During their first meeting in two years Steve was looking at him as if he were a criminal. It was enough for Bucky to feel a totally unrelieved inability to prove something, to clear and explain himself. That inability immersed him into muteness and provoked him into telling lies. That inability when he understood he had to prove his innocence even to Steve, his friend. He didn't admit he remembered. The only look at Steve might've been enough for him to understand in what capacity Steve was there. As Captain America, the person who had already made up his mind.  

And Bucky must have waited for that meeting. He must have feared it. Thought about it. The photo in the notebook with page markers...

They'd met finally.

At that moment something inside Bucky had died for good.

So that he chose lies instead of truth and cold instead of life.

Of course, the matter was in danger, too. But mainly in loss. In the lost arm, in the lost codes, in the lost past and in the lost present which Bucky managed to settle somehow or other in Romania for those two years. And Steve, stupidly, thought about wrong things and didn't notice his loss. Even worse. Steve didn't pay any attention.

Didn't notice how depressed Bucky was. He didn't have time for that. He thought everything had safely worked out for them because they had both survived and found a shelter. Even though his friend's decision about the cryochamber seemed strange, his thoughts were centered on his captured allies, and Steve let Bucky persuade him, just buying his arguments. Believing that they were created by an adult person's rational mind. 

Fool. Twice a fool. Of course, the matter was in the codes. A lot was said about the need to neutralize them somehow. But that thing they'd said nothing about was more important.

What now?

Depression trickled from Bucky's eyes even when he smiled. He looked away from Steve more often than before. As if he said, "You're cool, Steve, you did it all yourself both then and now, in these new times. And I'm nobody, I have nothing here, I have the programme in my head, loads of dead bodies on my conscience and I'm a cripple. A walking dead. So don't disturb me with your reassuring talks, I'd better sleep until better days. Escape from this damned life."

And Bucky turned inward, retreated into himself from himself.

He had an excellent pretext. 

'Leave me alone' sounded like 'I have the codes in my head and I don't belong to myself, so it would be better for everyone.' The same as a child hid in the closet alone with their grief.

Helpless despair. In this state Banner had put a bullet in himself.

And Bucky... 'Good strategy.' No, he wouldn't do something like this. In his position he didn't have to exert himself. He could just not interfere with others. When everyone was against you, arranging such a thing was no sweat at all. He kept quiet during the questioning. Stared with that hard, dead look, like he was saying, "Do what you want, I don't care." Bucky didn't want to talk. Didn't want to fight. Didn't want to prove anything to anybody.

Bucky didn't want to live.

Steve saw it so clearly that he felt shocked – how he could not notice it before? He’d had no time. He’d been busy. He’d been distracted, but even if he hadn’t been... He wouldn't have noticed it anyway. He didn't believe in hypnosis without magic and he didn't believe in psychiatric disorders as illness. He thought it would go away on its own, it was enough just to change conditions and surroundings to friendly and safe ones and then everything would naturally improve somehow, it'd get better. He didn't believe in gravity of such states. In the past Bucky himself would’ve laughed and said something like, "By these hapless shrinks' efforts, we'll soon start gettin’ treated for bad mood, Steve!" And now Bucky was sick. For a long time and gravely. Steve saw with terror that Bucky, not inclined to self-analysis, was unaware of the gravity of his state. Or he was aware, but held it in.

The serum prevented him from self-destruction, but it didn't heal his mind, and Bucky's mental health was far from normal. If only Natasha were here... She had a talent for making people open themselves up. Those people who thought of themselves as monsters. They would be locked up in one cell with two bottles of Russian vodka and half an hour later they’d be singing _Katyusha_ in two voices...

But Bucky had no one but Steve. As for unfamiliar psychs, Steve wasn't going to let them come within a mile of him. But he himself had no idea what to do and how to help him.

He was never easygoing. It was Bucky, a buoyant optimist, who'd encouraged him to believe in himself and look for a bright side in everything. Steve had always thought it had been easy for Bucky, looking  down from his attractiveness and popularity, to give him advice on how to stay positive. But now, that he had attractiveness and popularity of his own, he could say for sure – it hadn't been so easy for Bucky. To smile every time when everything wasn't okay at all. And find the right words when things were bad for Steve. Bucky always was stronger, more resilient and more self-confident.

That's why Bucky, so strong, who'd never been a victim in everyday Brooklyn life, had broken now. When powers way beyond his own appeared, took him in, crashed and broke everything he was. And then came powerlessness. It devoured him. Powerlessness to go away from the war at least for a while. Powerlessness to became that man again and get back everything irretrievably lost, powerlessness because things were so bad, he was tainted by so much blood and there were no words, actions or deeds that could wash it off.

He wanted to sink into a reverie and not remember. Anything. And he'd found the way to do it.

It was like dark insanity. Like a painful heartache under a seemingly calm face. It was abnormal tranquility. In his head something was churning, there were dark thoughts about guilt, self-humiliation, hopeless future, his lost arm and his lost self.

Steve started to feel shivers rising little by little. God, he had a hole inside. A hole! 

Steve fell into it through the grey wells of Bucky's eyes. It was like a huge quicksand filled void in his friend's core. Bucky took its very presence as acute mental pain – that he had the void in the room of his heart and past feelings, like a desert where once trees had grown. Steve remembered since their last fight he hadn't noticed any violent outbursts or real joy or any emotions at all. Bucky was calm and he’d bought the calmness.

What an idiot! It was emptiness.

Bucky escaped into a cryochamber. Like before, in Romania, he'd tried to escape from himself. And failed.

It was Steve for whom everything was almost usual there – bad guys threatened the world order, so he needed to run somewhere, save somebody, prevent something. For Bucky who was working so hard to turn back into himself, pulling himself out of oblivion bit by bit, all military operations were nothing but HYDRA. He knew how to fight, the Winter Soldier in him had a masterful command of it. But Bucky had been peaceful and cheerful guy in the past, and violence wasn't in his nature. Perhaps that's why, even in the war, he’d preferred to kill from a distance. As Bucky Barnes, he was running away from horrors created by his own hands, desperate for the war to forget about him.

For the same reason he hadn't returned to Steve. 

Near Captain America once again there was war, thunder, corpses and cities falling from the sky.

He didn't want to appear on Steve's doorsteps like this. Now Bucky belonged to a very different world far from the shining pantheon of superheroes. He didn't like to be dependant and couldn't be grateful for crumbs from someone's table, even if that someone was his best friend. He didn't come for help. Because in Captain America he didn't see the person able to help him.

No... Not like this. People also needed to make an effort to realize they needed help. And Bucky didn't have any energy left.

For the first time Steve felt he'd been too late. There wasn't sadness for loss of the quiet life in Bucky's eyes anymore, but there was something else much worse – full and complete hopelessness. And Steve couldn't do anything about it. Because he’d caused it himself in some way. Provoked one more victimization when didn't notice his state. Not enough time. The terrorist attack, the Accords, Stark, Zemo...

Just like now. Sure, Bucky pretended it wasn’t a big deal, and the arm wasn't real anyway, so no biggie.  

But having a bionic artificial arm was still better than having no arm at all.

A defective supersoldier. Already here, in Wakanda, Steve took him under his wing and thought he was taking care of his friend in doing so. But his gracious care burnt Bucky like vinegar. Only now Steve could see it when he remembered how Bucky had been shy of his help and when he'd still received it he'd clenched his teeth and looked aside, as if he hadn't been helped, but cut to shreds alive.

Bucky had told him nothing. More than that, lately his friend had learnt to lie. By the way, he wasn't skillful at it, but Steve was stabbed to the heart by the fact that Bucky preferred pulling the wool over his eyes to honest confession. As if the gulf between them became wider and Steve was one of those from  whose presence Bucky had to hide his true face.

Steve often thought of their past relationships. Protectionist friendship, patronage, feeling of an elder brother's calm strength and care. Bucky had been a leader, the centre of attention and he’d taken Steve's looking up to him for granted. But he hadn't got used to looking up to Steve even in the lines. Hadn't learnt to do it.  

After getting back his memories, with all his heart he’d craved getting back his self-control. He wanted to belong to himself again. Wanted just to live in peace. Like a person. He wanted to remember everything, settle things like before – in his own right manner. And as far as Steve knew Bucky... he could come to that former chicken Steve before whom it wouldn't be scary to look weak. But Steve had been different for a long time. Captain America. It was Captain America who'd found him in Romania, who'd interrogated him of Zemo, with whom he'd ridden in that cramped car, fought in the airport and flown to Oimyakon... And the look in Bucky's eyes, Steve had already seen looks like this. That look said: 'I've failed you, Commander.'

It was the first time Captain America's skin seemed unbearably heavy to Steve. 

 

*

 

"Sorry, Buck." He caught himself hovering over Bucky and sat on the sofa next to him. "I know it's hard for you. But if you ask who wants you like this one more time, I'll slap you."

They fell silent.

"You realize something's seriously wrong when you can't swat a mosquito with your both palms," Bucky commented quietly, filling his glass for the third time.

Steve could hear a note of bitter humour in his voice.

"I just want you to talk to me. Straight, like before. I'm your friend, not your commander. And you're my friend, not my subordinate. So much has happened... But it changes nothing." Steve put his hand on Bucky's knee and looked in his face. "I'm with you ‘til the end of the line, Buck."

Fool. Triple fool, damn it... Bucky was silent for a long time, looking into his glass with a hard stare, swirling the alcohol and observing steady white light gleaming on its surface.

"It's not about the arm," he remarked in a distant and dull tone."It's about atonement, Steve. The only way to atone for everything I've done is to do more good, save more lives than I've taken. And how can I do any good without my arm? I'll hardly be able to protect myself. I'm a lousy combatant right now."

"But you couldn't control yourself. You have nothing to atone for. It wasn't you who killed people. It's more like people were killed with you."

"I don't know how to live with it, Steve," Bucky said slowly.

It'd become clear at once – it had nothing to do with the arm.

"I remember their screams. And I don't know how to accept all this."

"You don't have to accept it."

"Yes, right, but... What do you suggest I should tell Stark and others? It wasn't me? I was programmed? In fact, someone killed them by my hands? I'm sorry it happened?"

"This is true."

"Yes, true." Bucky chuckled sadly. "It's not my fault, right? But it was me who killed them after all. And I remember it. If I take responsibility for it, I'll admit that there's no difference between me and the Soldier's programme. Consequently, it was I who did all this and I have no excuse. If I don't, then...it looks shitty anyway."

"It wasn't you," Steve said tightly.

"So what? Stark was shown how a man with my face killed his mother. He was shown, you see?" Bucky looked in his face. "If I saw with my own eyes somebody having killed my mom, I'd tear the bastard apart, too. And I'm afraid, rational arguments about him being under hypnosis wouldn't be of much help. You and me fought him and protected each other, but... If he and I were face to face, I might not dodge and fight back. Because some part of me thinks I've deserved it."

"He would kill you."

"Yes. Probably it would solve the problem."

Steve had to count to ten to suppress a scream rising in his chest.

"No," he said crisply. "No conflicts can be solved by death. Because you're my family, Buck. By punishing the one who murdered his family Tony would kill mine. For this I'd kill him. And everything would go downhill from there."

They fell silent. Bucky was staring in front of him thoughtfully. He put his glass on the little table and poured another drink.

"I'm sure Tony will accept it," Steve continued. "Not at once, but he will. He already knows it's not your fault, but he doesn't want to accept this knowledge yet. It hurts him too much right now. A person needs big courage for this, and he had a hard week. Pepper, our fight, then Rhodes..."

"And me. Icing on the cake." Bucky emptied his glass in one gulp without wincing. "Do you really believe it's possible to forgive something like this?"

"Not forgive," Steve corrected. "Accept as a given. You should believe in people, Buck. Wanda Maximoff forgave Tony, though she thought he was the reason for her family's death. Besides, Stark made Ultron who killed her brother. Losing everyone because of one person..."

"So she forgave him?"

"Eventually."

"How?"

"Well, she said she didn't want to look for the guilty anymore. And also she didn't want to be a victim."

"I wish everyone were so strong."

"He'll cope with it. The time comes and Tony will want to see you just to look into your eyes and realize that his thirst to avenge left him. That he's just able to take it."

"And you?"

"It's more complicated. I betrayed him. I'm afraid he'll never forgive that."

They fell silent.

"Do you think we'll manage?" Bucky asked quietly, without smiling.

"We'll try. We need to save you."

"You know how?"

"I hope I do."

Bucky smirked and shook his head.

"If you succeed, it'll already be something. I wouldn't like to breach walls with you again. If you find a way to prevent me from doing it, you'll be more than welcome to."

Steve then ducked down and gave him a slight butt at the shoulder. As if saying 'We'll do it. Together.'

It was their special gesture. In their distant Brooklyn past they'd expressed the whole range of feelings with it. 'I'm sorry', 'Chin up!', 'Don't pout', 'I'm with you', 'It's OK', 'Good morning', 'Good night'...

Never once had he done it since he became Captain America. 

 

*

 

Steve was lying in his room and looking at the ceiling – flat, smooth and white. And he was thinking.

It was hard and painful to think about Bucky, so Steve focused his thoughts on other things, getting his mind off the sore subjects.

Tony didn't call anymore. It was not like Steve seriously expected the contrary, but... It was hard and wrong. That weight was heavy in his chest and, as Steve considered himself right, it seemed twice so heavy.

Tony was wrong. No, not about Bucky and his family, Steve hardly could argue here. Personal was personal, and Tony wanted to settle serious personal scores with Bucky. He just didn't let himself realize yet that if it was Hulk instead of Bucky, Tony wouldn't kill Dr Banner. It was just that Bucky didn't turn green, so it was difficult for the brain to understand and believe that the man on the screen couldn't be responsible for his own actions. If Stark had had a bit more common sense at that moment, he'd have got mad at HYDRA. Those who really wanted to kill and had killed Tony's parents by the Winter Soldier's hands. 

Tony needed time to ponder and feel it.

Initiators weren't here. They were most likely dead long ago. But Tony didn't understand and didn't want to, because dragging the dead out of their graves didn't quench the thirst for vengeance as well as sweet revenge on the alive perpetrator. It meant they were to part ways.

Anyway, Steve left a chance for a contact. He decided to let things happen as they will from here.

Tony wasn't right about the Sokovia Accords. Though he had his own truth, Steve would listen to Tony's arguments much more seriously and more likely accept them if he were an exemplar of responsibility himself.

But Tony wasn't.

He didn't take Sokovia on himself. He didn't take Ultron. 

Steve too clearly remembered Ultron's creating, Tony's high-handedness and his inflexible, almost fanatic confidence that he was right. His unadulterated readiness to create the second monster without regard to his team's opinion, without their advice and consent, just like it happened when he'd created the first one. Steve knew Tony too well to judge what moved him. He knew Tony was consumed with guilt and for that very reason it was useless to talk to him reasonably, because Tony acted like any egoist not used to bearing the gnawing of his conscience for a long time.

He began to divide his burden among all of them. Like a guilty schoolboy starts refusing stubbornly: "Me? Why me?! And what about them? They also..." That time Steve didn't raise the question of who was guilty. He had no time, the question 'What should we do?' was more relevant, plus he considered it disgraceful to kick the one who was already down. Well, he should have. He should have reminded Tony  why they stuck together. Too late. Tony began to actively split everything evenly, taking a leading role of a distributor. Hiding behind 'we' when in fact it meant 'I'.  

'We need to be put in check', 'we are a national threat', 'we should', 'we must'...

He'd jumped up to demonstrate his loyalty so readily, as if in that way he strove to come to terms with his guilt, butter up his conscience, catching out the others in their mistakes. I'll atone for everything. I'll do my best. I'll prove I'm on the right side... In exactly the same way overseers were chosen from among prisoners in the concentration camps at the time. And Steve couldn't rid the thought that if Tony had concluded he, Steve, was a criminal and had to be in jail, then the cell next door should contain Tony. And the rest of them... How could he do to his teammates... this?

Now the Avengers who'd decided to stay with him were settling in France that didn't ink the Sokovia Accords. Which seemed a kind of ironic twist of fate because it was Wakanda, a former French colony, that presented the Accords at the tragic meeting in Vienna. People didn't like France here as well as they didn't like to once again remember their colonial and slave trading past. And France welcomed the heroes and now it was bloating with pride about that, showing it off before cameras at all levels, from the president to TV-shows. 

But refusal of the French to sign the Accords had a hidden agenda. Steve already heard bits and pieces about the secret organization under the Ministry of Defense with their residence in Toulouse. According to rumours, it was made up of mutants and God knew whom else. By not signing the Accords, the French government tried to hide their agents from international control. As well as the UK, Russia, Australia, Japan, China, Greece and seventy more states which were members of the UN. On the other hand, many of those seventy might've refused the Accords for other reasons.

Steve took a deep breath, locked his hands and put them under the back of his head, directing his thoughts into the previous direction.

Tony was wrong. Although Steve was genuinely sorry for him. In this war he'd lost more than anyone else. Even before he struggled to tell important things from personal ones and let his emotions influence his reasoning, but this time it was especially dangerous. Steve realized that his own actions in this conflict were also dictated by personal issues in large measure. Dictated by Bucky. But how much was the same thing realized by Tony?

Tony jumped at an ill-considered ill-advised idea which was disastrous. And dragged the others down with him. But like nobody else, he should've remembered how that usually went...

Here was Loki – and the Chitauri army rushed to the Earth through a portal over Manhattan. And here was Alexander Pierce, Hydra and ten seconds to deactivate Charlie. Or Ultron – and Sokovia went into the sky...

Time was always tight. Last time they didn't have it at all.

Who could've done more? When were they to get clearance for action?

While those eggheads in the UN would gather, believe and check, while they'd agree... They were not even a jury who, in order to pass a sentence, sometimes had to deliberate for several hours straight to decide the fate of one person. They were representatives of big geopolitics and the stakes were much higher. Hundreds and thousands of people, the destiny of lands. But they didn't and couldn't understand that were he even three times Captain America – life was still life, and during major ops he didn't have either nationality or political interest; there was neither an American flag nor far-reaching intentions behind him. The Avengers prevented. If possible, they tried to save everything they could. Who could do more when time was always against them?  

But the scary part was that soon they would have to pay the price for their belief in the validity of this idea. Pay the price with people. How many times would subordinate Avengers arrive too late 'til muck-a-mucks in their quiet offices decided whether they should intervene or not? If, according to Vision's opinion, they really entered a new round of war... very soon September 11 might look like child's play.

Tony was wrong.

Hell with the Sokovia Accords. They annoyed Steve like a burr in the saddle, and helpless anger with Tony got worse when he thought about paper-pushers' power over Stark. One idea had been growing in Steve's brain for a long time. The idea was about writing and adopting a by-law for Avengers, a body of their own rules covering everything from admission regulations to emergency actions. He himself needed rules, needed clear instructions when he had to act with regard to only his intuition which Steve didn't trust very much. 

He thought about it and every time he talked himself out of this idea because he didn't know any ways to make the same Tony – especially Tony – follow the rules. Or follow them for long enough until they came into direct conflict with Iron Man's wishes and interests. And then like in that pirate movie it would quickly turn out that rules for Tony were not rules at all, but just some non-binding guidelines.

Steve didn't have any levers of pressure and Tony was beyond his control. Tony needed a superior, mentor and judge, authority. Father. A retribution hand for a trouble-maker able to halt him in time because, Heaven knew, Tony realized how dangerous he was, ridden by frenetic power of his ideas.

He needed control.

And international control was a serious thing.

Unlike a request or an order from some clown in a suit with trinkets...

Steve took his hand from under his head, tiredly pinched the bridge of his nose several times and slid his palm over his tense face as if trying to erase it.  

He didn't dare admit to himself that to the very last second he didn't believe they could... knock heads so seriously. It constantly seemed to him someone was going to step in and break them up at the last moment. That Fury was going to come by his Helicarrier like a black deus ex machina, look at everyone reproachfully with his only eye – and then it would all be over. Everyone would calm down, pipe down like naughty children and remember it wasn't necessary at all to attack each other immediately, but they could listen to each other first, have an honest conversation...

Now, two months later, Steve saw they'd started with a wrong thing, they hadn't listened to each other and taken too much on faith at once. Fury wouldn't allow it. He cared about the Avengers. They were his project, his brainchild, and he was interested in their reconciliation more than anyone.

But he hadn't come.

Or it seemed to Steve at that critical moment when two forces were locking horns in squads at the airport that the green giant would appear out of nowhere, roar at the top of his iron throat a thundering 'HULK! MAKE PEACE!' and... Well, they'd probably have to make peace already in the beds of the first-aid station. And in plaster right to their necks for good measure. 

Because it shouldn't be like this. Now it was getting clear how fragile the unity had been that had held them together. Did it exist at all? Their discord was too clear a sign for those in whose throats the Avengers stuck. Their enemies were already livening up reading the news reports.

They were smiling.

Anyway, hypothetical problems didn't already matter now. The other thing mattered. 'Lullaby'. Bucky. His friend was in extreme need of his help. And Steve knew he wasn't going to let anyone near Bucky. He couldn't. It meant... It meant he had to seek a solution himself. As fast as possible.

Steve got up, took a notebook from the table, opened a blank page and started to draw a rescue plan. 

 


	4. STAGE TWO (A)

STAGE TWO

 

 

_"It would be a mercy to kill him," Scott insisted. "He's untamable."_

_"Now look here, Mr. Scott, give the poor devil a fightin' chance. He ain't had no chance yet. He's just come through hell, an' this is the first time he's ben loose. Give 'm a fair chance, an' if he don't deliver the goods, I'll kill 'm myself."_

 

*

Steve had immediately noticed this book among those brought at his request to the room where he'd managed to have the cryochamber placed. Now they had their private apartment of five rooms. Steve had insisted the cryochamber should be in a room resembling an inhabited one. There was deliberate intent behind that.

Bucky's cryochamber took up the whole corner here because of the monitors displaying his vitals, the tanks and the chamber itself. There was also a long high table and a low woven coffee table with two chairs on each side. A wheeled medical couch. A bookcase. There were a lot of books - fiction, professional literature and educational materials, phrasebooks and encyclopedias. Steve decided he'd understand eventually if he needed to add any more. The room had no windows, but the apartment still looked like a cross between a hospital ward and a prison cell due to white walls. Under the ceiling hung a security camera, the image displayed on the screen in the surveillance room down the hallway. In Steve's new room. The vent grates were pretty small; a person couldn't get through them.

"My people will keep watch at the exit from the wing. A panic button."

T'Challa put it into Steve's hand. Steve nodded and slipped the button into his trousers pocket though he wasn't going to use it.

Everything was almost ready.

Steve had put this book aside for himself. He knew its content well, but now for some reason he couldn't make himself read anything from the beginning to the very end so he read only pieces. In light of recent events the familiar text had acquired a totally new and frightening meaning. And besides, for some reason it gave him the feeling of crazy hope. It seemed the answer was hidden somewhere between those lines. In associations. Steve knew nothing about African mythology and lore, that's why man-eating leopards were far from him. But this... He opened the book at the bookmarked page and read:     

_White Fang could scarcely realize that he was free. Many months had gone by since he passed into the possession of Beauty Smith, and in all that period he had never known a moment of freedom except at the times he had been loosed to fight with other dogs. Immediately after such fights he had always been imprisoned again._

Steve put the book aside and covered his face with his hands. Jack London. White Fang.

He’d known this book almost by heart when he was a boy.

And now once-familiar lines were tearing at his heart as if being read for the first time.

 

*

"Я жду приказаний."

"At ease, Солдат."

The man blinked. For the fourth time. It was already the fourth time when this order caused almost visible confusion in him. But tightness left his body as if he had let himself relax slightly. And then he quickly - Steve could hardly notice it - looked around. Like he had the four previous times. His eyes took in the room, stopped at Steve, paused on his face and... slipped aside.

It had taken them six days to form this code sequence. Two days had been spent figuring out the intonation. Steve followed Black Widow and Hulk's example and it had taken them some time to succeed in getting the intonation right, too. He'd had to reject a friendly voice as well as a compassionate psychiatrist's one. Steve was pretty bad at both, and the Soldier seemed to scent a trick because he'd looked wary and bottled up.      

Steve adopted a calm confident voice. It worked.

What could he oppose cruel training with?

Steve decided to oppose it with freedom.

At ease, Солдат.

Steve waited for this moment. Until the line of the Soldier's back had changed a bit, tightness of his shoulders had disappeared, the cold stillness had left his body and changed to a more relaxed posture.

It was the first little victory.

"You're not going to have missions for the time being."

When the Soldier frowned in surprise Steve nodded at his shoulder. The left one. The Soldier followed his look.

"You lost it in action," Steve explained.

Like he'd done three times before.    

Steve had to bring in this explanation because for the first time when he hadn't done it and had just mentioned that there wouldn't be any missions any more, the Soldier had asked: "Training?" Surprised, Steve had answered: "No". And then the Soldier had asked in a dry and inexpressive voice: "An experiment?" Steve had been going to answer, "Yes, something like this"... and he hadn't. Because on this word the Soldier's face had become chalky pale. The silent horror had frozen in his grey eyes. Steve had said, "No", but it had hardly helped and 'til the end of the third hour the Soldier had behaved tensely and warily as if waiting for Steve to change his mind.

Now he behaved in a different way. Seeing his shoulder without the arm, the Soldier was silent for some time, then he asked: "I'm not able for duty anymore?"

His words were slow and cautious. 

"Temporarily," Steve answered. "That's why no assignments so far. You need to recover."

The Soldier nodded knowingly. It fit into his worldview and explained the situation in spades. He'd lost his arm in action. He was in rehab. There wouldn't be any missions until it was done.

This starter hadn't failed already three times and Steve had learnt it by heart. It was painful, but Steve could see that after this introduction the Soldier relaxed, apparently realizing no one was going to hurt him.

After that the more difficult part followed.

"Do you remember me?" Steve asked. "Don't try to remember everything in detail. Just nod if you know me."

He had to introduce the latter two sentences for the previous two times because for the first time the Soldier had gotten deep in thought and then come out with a pretty cloying "Destabilization..."

The Soldier nodded. He remembered.  

"Good."

Steve smiled pleasantly, but not too much so, trying not to overdo it. The Soldier had a pretty darn good nose for falseness. Last time he'd frowned and tensed a bit when Steve had smiled at him. Now it went okay.

"I'm Steve. I will work with you. Now it's only me who'll work with you."

The Soldier nodded again. He understood that, too.  

 

*

Now every day went on a strict schedule. More precisely, those three hours Steve spent on communication with the Winter Soldier. The rest of his time was left for short sleep and preparation for their training, that's why those daily three hours were a carefully rehearsed performance. After waking and a phrase selection 'question-answer' Steve sent the Soldier to the next room, the door of which was always opened. It was a makeshift sports hall. The floor was covered with thick pads woven tightly of straw which crunched and sprang under feet. There was also a tower punch bag and a balance beam at the far end of the hall. There weren’t any windows here, either, but the hall was lit with bright white light.   

The Soldier warmed up after sleep, then he went to wash. A tiny bathroom held a shower, a basin and a toilet. One could enter it through the sports hall and it was always open, unlike the next room. The door next to the bathroom was locked up tight so far. Behind it there was a room customized as both a procedure unit and an infirmary. Just in case. After his morning procedures the Soldier came back to the room to breakfast. The meal was light - mostly smoothies, juices, fresh fruit and vegetables. They ate together. It was the rule. Finishing their breakfast, they went to practice in the sports hall.

They tried to spar. It didn't go well. The Soldier fought in full force and he was constantly skidded out to the right, so he regularly ended up on the pads and Steve had to keep track of the sparring for both of them, containing and directing his partner's unrestrained fury.

But he'd chosen this way of interaction because of three reasons. The first one dealt with Steve's thought that fighting was one of the main ways of the Soldier's contact with other people and it was easier to reach him through fight. The second was more practical. During their fight in the lab Steve had noticed that, after losing his arm, the Soldier had also lost the sense of his usual gravity centre, but he hadn't had any time to get used to it.   

The last - more important - reason was Bucky's words about cripples…

...and that barely perceptible expression which flickered in the Soldier's eyes when he looked at his shoulder.

After the sparring Steve sent him to shower and when the Soldier came back they had dinner. Steve watched, memorized and corrected the menu. After dinner the same thing happened every time.

"Have some rest, Солдат. It's your free time."

"What should I do?"

The question sounded calm if a bit confused.

"Anything you want," Steve answered. "Everything here is at your disposal. If you need something, let me know. The communication button's on the wall to the left from the door."

The Soldier nodded. After that Steve retreated to his room and without turning on the light watched him via the monitor. This last hour was probably more important than previous two. Steve observed what the Soldier was doing when he was left alone. He kept the notebook and a pencil ready, his eyes intent on the screen. The Soldier's behaviour was changing. First three days he was stiff, looked about, moved slowly around the room and touched books.

Worse yet, he sat on the medical couch for a long time and - every time Steve's stomach clenched - touched his left shoulder and a smooth cut of his arm under insulation. He touched it with the tips of his fingers, gingerly, as if trying to put up with this new strange reality and accept it. The emptiness where he used to have the arm. The instrument. The weapon. The part of himself.

Steve didn't know yet what to do with it. Anyway, on the fourth day the Soldier understood the state of things and started acting... easier. More freely. He began to look through magazines, sitting in the chair with his right ankle on his left knee - the pose which demonstrated the very notion of "at ease". The right to choose a more comfortable position.       

He was getting settled in his new cage.

An hour later Steve came back and said:

"Time to sleep, Солдат."

The man nodded obediently, put aside the thing he held in his hand, approached the cryochamber and submissively let Steve fasten him. The dome rose, and cold numbed the Soldier's - Bucky's - whole body.

The next day everything started again. 

 

*

Steve lived in the next room which he called 'the observation room' to himself. There was a bed, a table with a computer, an office chair and a wardrobe. They had to share the bathroom, so Steve washed and shaved himself while Bucky was asleep. Every day Steve passed by the cryochamber, even several times, and every time his heart missed a beat. It was like living in one house with a coffin.

In the bathroom there was a mirror over the basin. It was clearly European, in a heavy gilded frame. Every time Steve was standing in front of it he found himself wondering what the Soldier thought about when he saw himself in it. For some reason at this moment he recalled that in a dream mirrors as well as clocks were the markers which could help tell a dream from reality and realize one was sleeping. Although everything was possible in a dream - even going through a mirror or picking one's own shadow from the floor, but the ability to see himself in the mirror... he should've reacted on it.        

Or shouldn't?

Before he knew it, Steve accepted this strange explanation. Trance as a kind of sleepwalking. Bucky was a sleepwalker. Not that rem cycle when he saw something and repeated it in real life. It was more like his brain was half-awake (or half-asleep) and working in max economy mode. All motor skills were preserved entirely, he understood speech, responded to it, he was able to carry out complicated actions and operations. But at the same time thorough analysis of incoming data, associations, emotions and memory were turned off. He was sleeping, but it wasn't a dream. More like autonomous operation of his serum.

A computer working in safe mode.

And again, T'Challa was right: you couldn't wake sleepwalkers. It was dangerous.  

 

*

The first fundamental discovery Steve made accidentally, during that third hour. To his embarrassment, he poorly understood what could occupy the Soldier's leisure and every time stumbled over the fact the man needed both hands for most activities. That thought was unpleasant and oppressive. It reminded him of Bucky's latest comment about himself. A cripple. Too many things that had been taken for granted before were now inaccessible or caused significant difficulties.

Without his bionics Bucky felt physically handicapped. And to be honest, handicapped he was. The arm enabled not only strength of the blow. It was ability to deflect bullets, complicated combat movements, driving vehicles and rifle shooting. Even doing up buttons and shoelaces. The bionic arm obeyed Bucky and allowed him to feel fully valid. Able to copy any tasks even better than people with both real arms. And now...      

Steve thought about it, watching the Soldier go through the paper stock given to him. He thought he should do something to provide the man with a broader variety of things. He'd swept TV aside immediately and hadn't had enough time to pick up music.

The Soldier hardly touched any books. Also he remained indifferent to Batman and Superman comics as well as to a couple of Playboys that Steve had reluctantly added for thrill. But on the fourth day the Soldier took a fancy to National Geographic magazines from different years. He sat in the chair - Steve had almost got used to seeing him there - with his leg crossed over his knee and turned the pages slowly. Steve had never before noticed Bucky's love to these magazines. He didn't know if the Soldier read the articles or just looked at the pictures...     

But then, when the Soldier closed the magazine and took another one, Steve saw the famous Afghan Girl photo on its cover and fixed his gaze on the screen, totally struck with a sudden realization. At first he couldn't believe. After putting the Soldier to sleep Steve watched the footage late into the night, and his hunch became stronger, until it became substantiated fact.

All those magazines were different.

Not once in all four days had the Soldier taken the same magazine twice.

He memorizes, Steve thought, he memorizes visual images. He remembers he's already seen them.

Steve sat and looked into the screen and he didn't know what to do with the information.

But it was important.

  

*

"Я жду приказаний."

"At ease, Солдат."

No, their sparrings were a total failure. And Steve had begun to understand why. Bucky had lost his arm and gone to sleep in cryo too fast to get used to it. In his somnambulistic state he hadn’t had time to get used to the missing arm, much less had enough time to do combat reconnaissance under new conditions. With his lost center of gravity, he constantly wobbled in different directions. In the absence of a counterbalance, his movements were too violent and Steve could feel clear misbalance in his whole body. The bionic arm had been heavy, and besides, it had led and shaped his fighting style to a great extent. And while it was easier for Bucky to accept the absence of his arm on an intellectual level, the Soldier made the same mistakes over and over again. He fought as if he still had it. He didn't try to throw punches with it, that point at least was fine.   

He tried to use it for blocks. And he inevitably got hit into his left side even if - to the credit of Steve's self-control – it was at half-strength. Every time it happened his face showed the mix of evident - too evident - fury and confusion. As if he had known and remembered that he'd had his arm there and it shouldn't have been like that. Even if in his quiet state the Soldier understood what had happened to him, this knowledge was entirely gone during sparrings.

Steve began to figure it out, watching him and his behavior on the sixth day. Or on the second one after the effective introductory phrase. Steve still thought that the Soldier, being a well-functioning war machine, had to catch the trick sooner or later. Accustom him to it, draw some conclusions. But mistakes continued to occur again. And realization which kept growing bigger and wider was about his memory about himself. Just like Steve suspected, the Soldier didn't remember anything in the conventional sense. He used his experience instead. His body led him on its own, letting him know what he knew, what he should do and how he should do it, to achieve a successful result.            

And now this experience was betraying him. The decisions it suggested during their sparring one way or another dealt with the arm that wasn't there anymore, but the experience had no time to readjust itself and remove it from equation. That's why the Soldier acted as if he had a phantom limb. Like a person trying to take a cup using their amputated arm, relying on their body's memory about itself. So the Soldier kept making mistakes. Again and again. When he ended up on the pads he looked with fury and confusion - why hadn't his fingers closed on the cup? They must've been there.

And that gesture Steve caught on the screen. A regular and unchanged one. Touching the stump. He had to do something with it, too. If only he could understand what exactly...      

 

*

"Don't try to remember in details. Just give a nod if you know me."

Steve began to write a training programme when he was furious. No, not with the Soldier, though with him, too. It was just that they’d been fighting in full contact and Steve had hit the Soldier's exposed side and had been afraid he'd broken Bucky's ribs. He’d had to finish the sparring, take the Soldier to the balance beam, have him sit and probed his injured side, strongly recommending that he say where it hurt if it did. The Soldier had been silent. He hadn't even grimaced during the examination. So Steve had felt impotent anger at the impossibility of calling Bucky and getting an explicitly clear answer, at HYDRA and the programme wired so deep that the Soldier couldn't - just didn't know how to - spar. He'd been taught to fight in full force. That's why the risk of injury was so high. On the one hand Steve wasn't happy to fight an unconscious one-armed Bucky and on the other, he was afraid to lose control over the rampaging Soldier and hurt him.         

He'd noticed it back in Berlin. When all three of them - Steve, Bucky and the copter - had been falling into the bay as one, he'd managed to think that Bucky in the Soldier's mode had no self-preservation instinct. He could have died when he'd lugged Steve down with him and that falling piece of metal, but his mission had been more important. That meant the programme lay deeper than instinct and the will to live. The Soldier had been trained to overcome it. Those frigging savages. Steve absolutely didn't like it. He had to ponder how to deal with it, but couldn't come up with any decision so far.       

So Steve began to write a training programme. Before that, though, one more strange thing had occurred.

"I'm going to write a programme for you. Before you start to fight you should recover your balance and gravity center. I can understand that it's hard for you, but don't burst to fight in full force. To recover all your old skills in full measure, first you need..."

They'd been having dinner after that infamous fight in which the Soldier's ribs had or hadn't been hurt. Steve had been annoyed, that’s why, unguarded, he'd talked candidly to the Soldier, almost like he was talking to Bucky. He hadn't known if the Soldier had been listening to him or not or how attentively. The man had been eating obediently without engaging in conversation or looking at Steve 'til he'd finally been done. 

"If you need anything, let me know." Steve had headed to the door, providing the routine explanations about free time. "The connection button is to the left of the door."

"Lights," the Soldier had said suddenly.

Steve had frozen on the spot. Looked back.

"What?"

The Soldier hadn't been looking at him. He'd been standing near the table and touching the tabletop with his fingers.

"The lights." He'd repeated tonelessly. "They're very bright. Is it possible... to dim them?"

"Yes. Yes, sure."

The Soldier had nodded.

Steve had fulfilled his request. The Soldier's first request. He'd thought the Soldier had asked about it because bright light had made him nervous, inevitably reminding of operating rooms. But Steve hadn't been sure if it was true.    

 

*

"At ease, Солдат."

The next day he relaxed as usual, looked around the room quickly, then his gaze went to Steve's face, and then to Steve's surprise the Soldier looked at his left shoulder and frowned, his mouth pursed a bit.

"My arm. Have I lost it in battle?" the Soldier asked.

Steve's heart missed a beat.

"Yes," he answered. "That's right."

And the Soldier nodded as if Steve said something he already expected to hear.  

 

*

"You have only one arm now so you should take care of it. I want to correct your fighting style. We'll focus on kicks, sweeps and hacks. Can you add these movements to your workout?

The Soldier took the list and ran his cold eyes over it. Nodded.

Unwittingly, after that accidental success with light, Steve began to talk to him more often. He didn't even ask anything. He talked himself. He explained what they were going to do, described the Soldier's mistakes, shared his ideas about training sessions. It seemed to him the Soldier was listening though the man never answered and if he gave a nod, he did it rarely. This reticence looked strange because Bucky had always been talkative and eloquent. The Soldier answered scantly, briefly and dryly. But he did answer sometimes and that was a mercy.

Steve watched his face. Caught scarce glimmers of emotions in it. Everything that in any way disturbed the sleep-walkers detachment.   

"Good. And before we start to spar again, let's do something."

The Soldier was standing square and as stiff as poke, with his one leg up and a local analogue of a teabowl - a shallow wooden saucer - filled with water up to its brim in his outstretched arm.

"Stay like this," Steve ordered. "Keep your balance."

The Soldier managed to maintain his posture for a minute plus. Then he swayed aside and the saucer fell on the pads, slopping water.

It's going to be long, Steve thought, picking the teabowl and filling it with water again.    

 

*

_Then the god spoke, and at the first sound of his voice, the hair rose on White Fang’s neck and the growl rushed up in his throat. But the god made no hostile movement, and went on calmly talking. For a time White Fang growled in unison with him, a correspondence of rhythm being established between growl and voice. But the god talked on interminably. He talked to White Fang as White Fang had never been talked to before. He talked softly and soothingly, with a gentleness that somehow, somewhere, touched White Fang. In spite of himself and all the pricking warnings of his instinct, White Fang began to have confidence in this god. He had a feeling of security that was belied by all his experience with men._

 

*

Several days in a row they have to alternate resetting of balance with strength training. Steve makes the Soldier practice leg swings. He marks the height of a kick on the punch bag with blue tape at the level of his shoulder and orders the Soldier to kick it again and again. First with one leg, then with the other. Steve holds the bag from behind so that the Soldier can't tear it off so he's already caught a couple of hits on his shoulders. Coordination still betrays the Soldier when the man gets hot. And he likes to get hot, starts giving staccato cries at every kick. He kicks frenziedly, at his full force, as if the bag were the torso of some asshole he knew.   

They practice jumps, landings, falls and rollings. If Steve fails to explain something with words, he shows the move himself. The warm-up includes stretches on the balance beam so the Soldier’s getting better at swings now.

“Harder!” Steve orders, and the foot hit falls on the bag three inches from his head.

He doesn’t stop ‘til the Soldier is sweaty and short-breathed. It’s the only time he allows himself to give orders.

And everything is in order to make the Soldier friends with his body again. To explain practically, ‘Yes, you’ve lost the dominant hand and a weapon, but you’re a supersoldier and you’re viable!’. Bucky’s words kept haunting his mind and Steve trained in earnest, only keeping himself from going back to sparrings.  

They couldn’t do it so far. The damned teabowl with water still remained unbeaten.

Whatever was the result of their trainings, he always gave his mark. If the Soldier did everything right, Steve praised him. If the Soldier had trouble doing something, he said, “It’s okay.” Even if Soldier was surprised at it, he gave no sign. And Steve couldn’t understand if he adopted or not the fact that no one was going to punish him for his mistakes any more.

Bucky was sleeping. He could do anything he wished in his dream. Steve needed to return this knowledge to him.   

 

*

The teabowl flew in an arc and fell on the pads, slopping its contents.

“Hell!” the Soldier barked.

Shocked, he shut his mouth immediately and went stone-still. Then he jerked his head up worriedly, and Steve found himself smiling involuntarily at the memory of ‘Who the hell is Bucky?!’.

“It’s all right.” He laughed quietly, shaking his head, and Bucky stared at him inquiringly. “I allow you to swear. It’s a good reaction.”

“Why?” the Soldier asked instead of his usual nod a-la, “Took notice.”

“Because if your fails make you so upset you start swearing, it means you wanted to succeed. And this is important. Got it?”

A nod.

“Let’s continue then.”

 

*

An hour later Steve watched through the monitor how the Soldier was spending his free third hour, balancing on one foot in the center of the room and trying to hold a saucer with water in his hand. He held it for a long time, not an hour of course, but when he changed legs, his balance betrayed him and he hardly managed to get back on his two feet not to slop the water on the floor. Steve watched how the Soldier put the saucer on the table and frowned, nipping on his lower lip. And then he saw…

The Soldier stretched. With his whole body, long and with gusto, raising himself on tiptoes, putting his hand up and bending his wrist.

Steve felt quiet almost stunning elation flooding him. He felt like a scientist who’d seen a rear natural phenomenon, a new one which hadn’t ever been observed by anyone. Belatedly he thought the Soldier’s room awfully lacked a bed. Steve had somehow underestimated its significance. Sure, the Soldier slept in the cryochamber, but a bed was not only for sleeping. Just lying around was pleasant, too, and Steve thought, perhaps, he shouldn’t have deprived the Soldier of such an opportunity.       

 

*

_In the end, the god tossed the meat on the snow at White Fang’s feet. He smelled the meat carefully; but he did not look at it. While he smelled it he kept his eyes on the god. Nothing happened. He took the meat into his mouth and swallowed it. Still nothing happened. The god was actually offering him another piece of meat. Again he refused to take it from the hand, and again it was tossed to him. This was repeated a number of times. But there came a time when the god refused to toss it. He kept it in his hand and steadfastly proffered it. The meat was good meat, and White Fang was hungry. Bit by bit, infinitely cautious, he approached the hand. At last the time came that he decided to eat the meat from the hand. He ate the meat, and nothing happened..._

 

*

They always ate together and in silence at first. Steve didn’t try to start a conversation. On the one hand, he didn’t want to bother and distract the Soldier, on the other hand, he observed. He needed to know what the Soldier ate to compose their menu more carefully. He believed the Soldier’s preferences matched Bucky’s for obvious reasons, assuming that they shared one tongue and consequently one taste memory.

But everything Steve knew about Bucky’s likes dated back to Brooklyn of the 1930s, and the modern world had undergone several consecutive revolutions in the art of gastronomic enticement since then. He would probably have puzzled out American and European cuisines, familiar or at least understandable.

But here… The local menu aroused careful bewilderment even on the Soldier’s impassive face. Silent cooks brought them a cart with covered dishes for two. Steve would cook himself, but he couldn’t use local products so far. He’d never seen a lot of the stuff they gave him. Even if the appearance looked familiar, the taste was always a lottery game. He asked to attach a note in English or any other European language to every dish and soon he got a bit familiar with them. In his opinion, food was an important part of communication after all.   

The Wakandans used their country’s geographic location to its full extent. Only a few products on their table were imported from foreign countries. Basically, they grew and gathered everything there. They ate fruit, vegetables and fish, more rarely – meat of domestic goats and birds. They made scones and bread of cassava, yam and sweet corn flour, couscous of manioc, tapioca in any kind; they fried, boiled and stewed batata and universally ate familiar and well-known tomatoes, eggplants, peppers and spinach. These were served in the form of stews, soups and salads with orange, wine and other sauces, hot or spicy to choose from. Of new things Steve discovered for himself surprisingly delicious bamia aka gumbo.   

There was a lot of fish on menu – mostly salted, smoked and fried. Several times they ate pasties with prawns, some mysterious river shellfish and even snails.

One time they were served fufu. This dish looked like small balls and was made of crushed manioc root crops with bananas and numerous spices. Since his first days in Wakanda Steve, after falling across this dish, tried to avoid it in every possible way, considering it a local kind of bioweapon. But he forgot to warn the Soldier about it.

Heavy coughing drew Steve from his thoughts about the past training. The Winter Soldier, keeping his hand to his mouth, desperately tried to stifle it, his whole body shaking and his eyes getting red rapidly. No way. Even his enhanced body didn’t want to obey and reflexively let them know what exactly it, the body, thought about those African spices of yours. No sooner had Steve shot a glance at the dish in front of him that he immediately realized what had happened.

“Here, wash it down.” He quickly poured a full glass of pineapple juice and handed it to the poor guy. “It’s my fault. I’ve forgot to tell you. You should swallow fufu whole, not chew it. Sorry.”

The Soldier cast a quick incomprehensible look at him and drained the glass at one draught. Then he got his wind, thought a bit – and poured himself some more juice, handling a massive pitcher with one hand with surprising ease.

Since then he didn’t even touch fufu any more. But he started drinking pineapple juice every day.

Fruit compensated for the almost total absence of sugar. It was replaced by honey, imported dates and figs. Steve tried to save fruit for breakfast, pining for yoghurts and cheese. Almost no one drank milk here in spite of keeping goats, besides the climate didn’t allow anyone to seriously process dairy products. Imported butter was worth its weight in gold.

They had more than enough fruit. Steve had already tasted bright-blue berries similar to blueberries, guava, soursops and star apples and also citropsis which looked and tasted like tangerines, but were sweeter and smelled like gas for some reason. Anyway, there were fewer surprises with fruit. In plenty did they have bananas, mangos, pineapples, coconuts and papayas, especially the last-named. In the morning they drank smoothies of these fruit and even their serum didn’t help them to identify those smoothies’ ingredients. Besides, Steve found the local coffee unusually tasty.

The Soldier showed a taste for some things. For example, for long eggplant-like African pears or horned melons, vaguely resembling orange cucumbers and tasting like banana purée.

Some things weren’t eaten by the Soldier at all. Even the things Bucky had liked in his day. For example, sorbets for want of milk ice cream. He didn’t eat any cold food at all although Steve personally asked the cooks to make some analogue. Bucky loved ice cream. But the Soldier didn’t try it. In the end, Steve ate the whole portion on his own devoured by a dilemma.

He could order… tell the Soldier to taste it, this fruit purée with ice and juice. He might even like it. He would definitely like it. Steve was sure.

But he didn’t give such an order and realized he wasn’t going to give it.  

Not even because he considered it silly and undignified to order him to eat something. It just seemed to Steve that in the Soldier’s mind the fact that sorbet turned out to be tasty couldn’t equal the fact that Steve had allowed him to decide on his own if he wanted eat it or not. A conscious action. A choice. The Soldier had his rights here. There weren’t many of them, but they existed. This was the most important thing he had yet to realize. An order stripped him of all responsibility for his actions because an order is an order. You were told to do it – you did it. And if he didn’t want to eat purée with ice… well, then so be it. That was a result, too.

Given that ice…

Steve drove those thoughts away. 

 

*

With the emergence of a bed, the Soldier discovered music. It was a disk player on AA batteries. Sure thing, a digital MP3 player would be much more compact and convenient, but Steve decided on that variant. A disk like a record in olden times was not only a storage medium. It was an item. And an item usually had some marker in one’s consciousness or started to gain it over the course of time. A new item, an old item, mine, someone else's, favourite, hated, etc. Steve wanted to create any connections between the Soldier and the things in that room. He thought it would help him to understand the Soldier better.

Besides, he didn’t want the Soldier to hide behind headphones. Steve wanted to know what music he listened to, what music he might listen to twice. It was also important. It gave more facts and Steve was thirsty for them. 

He chose music as a simple harmless way to have fun and for a long time he explained to the Soldier its useful qualities – from relaxation to bridging the gaps in knowledge of musical styles between different times and countries. He didn’t think the Soldier really needed that knowledge and he wasn’t even sure the Soldier had understood and accepted all his explanations. But the man started listening to music only with the appearance of a bed and Steve had to acknowledge his full inability to figure out the way they were interrelated.

For long periods of time he observed through the monitor how the Soldier put on a disk, seemingly in a haphazard way, and sat on the bed, tailor-fashion, thumbing the magazines, the same National Geographic. To some music, mainly to classical, he just lay, staring at the ceiling. To other, however, very seldom, he walked in circles around the room. Usually it happened when something rhythmical sounded, but every time was different.

When he was watching the Soldier lie without movement yet again, he had the idea.

“Catch.” The next day at the very beginning of the third hour Steve threw a tennis ball to the Soldier and the man easily caught it with three fingers. “For motor coordination. Two conditions: don’t throw it at the camera and the monitors.”

The Soldier nodded. Until the cryosleep he sat on the bed, cross-legged, and threw the ball along the trajectory the floor – the wall – the hand. But he didn’t look at the ball as if completely lost in music rhythm. Or it was just Steve’s imagination.


	5. STAGE TWO (B)

*

The next day after the answer ‘Anything you want’ the Solder asked pensively,

“Am I allowed to go outside this room?”

At first Steve was taken aback.

“We’re given only these rooms. Do you want to get out of here? Or go for a walk?”

The Soldier nodded. Steve wasn’t exactly sure if it was about getting out or a walk, but he asked T’Challa’s permission, just in case. The man let them walk along the hallway at an agreed hour when the wing was blocked, but he warned Steve if his mentee ran away Steve would catch him in the jungles on his own.

Steve agreed. That day he canceled the training and after the meal they made their way to the wide picture windows. 

Wet shady jungles spread like a continuous patchy-green palette as far as the eye could see. The sun was sparkling in white froth of waterfalls which nourished one of multiple turbulent confluents of the Ogooué River; bright arcs of rainbows were hanging above the waterfalls. Misty haze was blanketing the thick roof of evergreen rainforest, its low cover was traced with elephant trails and called ‘Green Hell’ by travelers and scientists. Flocks of birds were wafting in the sky, and though they couldn’t hear birds’ voices, the forest was full of life. From here at this height, its green canopy looked somber and totally impenetrable.

There was something primeval in it. Protogenic, prehistoric. _Lost World_ by Arthur Conan Doyle.

For some reason Steve recalled the statement that many kinds of living beings weren’t discovered here yet.

The Soldier was looking all over the jungles spread out below and thundering steam of waterfalls; for a long time he was looking through Bucky’s grey eyes at the statue of the gigantic panther with its teeth bared, emerging from the fog, sculpted in the living monolith. It was wet from the curling clouds and the recent downpour.

“Can we go back?” he asked sullenly, his eyes still glued on the landscape outside the window.

“Yes, if you want,” Steve said in surprise.

The Soldier headed back to his room with quick steps. Steve followed on his tail. Entering the familiar white room, the Soldier slowed down, then sat on the bed and went still. Motionless, with very straight back.

“What’s wrong?” Steve sat beside him.

“You’ve violated the protocol,” the Soldier said quietly.

Steve was shocked. It was the Soldier who’d asked to go after all.   

 “I’ve got the permission from the owner of this building, so it’s okay.”

The Soldier shook his head stubbornly.

“You’ve violated the protocol. It’s followed with punishment.”

“Are you going to punish me yourself?” Steve smiled, but then he saw something dark deep in the grey eyes and his smile faded. “If you mean those who wrote this protocol and put it into effect, they’re already gone. There’s no one left to punish you.”

Silence. This dialogue was heading towards a record high for the number of the Soldier’s phrases.

“I must’ve been pensioned off, right? Because of the arm?”

For the number of the Soldier’s questions, too.

“No. What makes you think this?”

“I’m not accomplishing any missions. I’m useless.”

 “It’s not like that,” Steve answered. “You’re in rehab. You’ll get back your bionics and be as good as new. So far you need to recover.”

The Soldier’s eyes became empty and very dull suddenly. Dead. The air filled with lead-heavy silence.

 “That’s not right.”

He said it quietly, without conviction. With almost no hope in his voice. And Steve was suddenly afraid to believe in the meaning of this ‘That’s not right.’ There were too many meanings.

That’s not right that you treat me like this because this is punishable. Or…

That’s not right to give it way if it’s going to end soon. When I go back to them and they wipe me.

For the first time ever he showed a kind of… attitude towards what was happening. 

So Steve made up his mind. The legend wasn’t supposed to be corrected but he just couldn’t bear it anymore. He gave up. He put his hand on the Soldier’s real shoulder and squeezed it tightly. The Soldier turned his head.

“We’ll give you back your bionics as soon as possible. But you’re not going to return to them. Do you hear me? No wipes, no torture and electricity anymore. And everything’s right. Because you’re mine now and you follow only my orders.”

The Soldier stared at him incredulously. Blinked slowly.

“I’m yours?” he asked again.

Steve realized belatedly he shouldn’t have said it.

“Yes. I took you from there. On my own responsibility.”

After this anything could happen. But nothing happened. The Soldier silently drew some conclusions and nodded. Steve didn’t know if the man would forget this conversation and if he should add it to their routine.

No, it wasn’t possible.

Every conversation from their routine he started himself. This one was started by the Soldier and Steve was glad it’d happened at least. And besides, he was glad that hopelessness had almost left those misty grey eyes. It was strange, but Steve didn’t notice how much of it had been in his eyes ‘til it disappeared.

Together with the feeling of peace and safety he started to experience the worry of losing it. A very human feeling. For a man who lived for today to waste his short time grieving it would soon be over…

Just then Steve believed the Winter Soldier remembered him. Remembered for real. While having absolutely no idea about Bucky Barnes, he was aware that it had been bad and painful before, but tolerable. Then he’d lost the arm and it had become almost good. This man, Steve, took care of him while he was partially incapacitated. And then they would give his arm back and it all would resume its natural course.  

And now it wasn’t going to be like before. Steve had said so.

Steve snapped out of his thoughts and saw that the Soldier was staring at him. He used to avoid looking at Steve’s face, at least for a long time; he preferred to gaze dully sideways. It was the first time he was looking like this – right at Steve, just at his face. Steve felt awkward and stood up.

“You have an hour. Get some rest.”

And he went away trying to ignore the thought it looked too much like an escape.

*

_The god went on talking. In his voice was kindness—something of which White Fang had no experience whatever. And within him it aroused feelings which he had likewise never experienced before. He was aware of a certain strange satisfaction, as though some need were being gratified, as though some void in his being were being filled. Then again came the prod of his instinct and the warning of past experience. The gods were ever crafty, and they had unguessed ways of attaining their ends._

_Ah, he had thought so! There it came now, the god’s hand, cunning to hurt, thrusting out at him, descending upon his head. But the god went on talking. His voice was soft and soothing. In spite of the menacing hand, the voice inspired confidence. And in spite of the assuring voice, the hand inspired distrust._

*

"Do you remember me? Don't try to remember everything in detail. Just nod if you know me."

“I know you. You’re a handler.”

Steve had never told this word to him. He wasn’t sure he liked such a characterization, but anyway it sounded a bit better than a ‘puppet player’.

* 

 “Great,” Steve took a teabowl from his hand, and the Soldier lowered his foot. He stood straight and could stand on one leg for ten minutes without spilling the water. “Standing’s okay, but we’re going to work with movements in a different way. I guess, it’s too early to talk about sparring, but progress had been made.”

And Steve smiled at the Soldier. Warmly and sincerely, happy with his success. When they were leaving the gym, he patted the Soldier’s shoulder amicably.

“Well done,” Steve said.

The Soldier glanced at him in surprise and swiftly turned his eyes as if he suddenly felt awkward. They ate as usual. The Soldier looked at his plate. But when Steve repeated “Anything you want”, he said:

“Red.”

At Steve’s confused look he explained:

“Can I have something red? Here.”

He seemed strangely tense. As if he’d summoned up his courage for a long time.

“Yes, sure.”

Steve thought about the Soviet Union’s banner, but he didn’t want to overplay it.

The next day a red cover appeared on the Soldier’s bed. Deep bloody-burgundy colour looked even brighter in the white room. Looking around after ‘At ease’, the Soldier paid attention to it. His gaze also rested on Steve’s face longer than before.

"Do you remember me? Don't try to remember everything in detail. Just nod if you know me."

“I know you. You’re Steve. You’re working with me.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Steve said and his voice almost betrayed him.

*

Steve had already realized it. Long ago, since those magazines.

The Soldier is teachable.

He’s not a blank sheet after every boot, but an uninterrupted parallel consciousness with its own experience. Like Banner and Hulk. A shapeshifter, then?

The Soldier was built on Bucky, on his basis, like on a foundation. The Soldier liked the same things Bucky liked and he was storing up memories, but the programme just kept setting a label ‘Not relevant for the mission’ on much of the incoming data.

But still. Perhaps, the matter was that no one wiped him – the most unpleasant and painful experience Bucky had mentioned. Or it was permanence of the scenery that had influenced him like this. Anyway, Steve could see that the Soldier recognized him. He guessed the phrases just after ‘At ease’. As soon as he focused his eyes on Steve, he looked with a calm and intelligent gaze. Intelligent in his own way. He had looked like that on the helicarrier when they had stood face to face – intently, unblinkingly, like at a target.

But now it seemed the Soldier was all ‘I know you. You’re Steve, you’re working with me. Well, what are we going to do today?’

Steve didn’t know if he could consider it a breakthrough. And if this recognition would be enough when it wasn’t he who read the code.

* 

That day the training was intense. Steve held the board with both hands and the Soldier kicked it like a karateka breaking the board in two. Then Steve took a new board, and the Soldier kicked it with the other leg. Then another board, but a level higher. Then one more, and more, and more… By the end of their training Steve’s hands hurt because they had caught several strong hits. The Soldier was so exhausted he breathed hard and swayed a bit. Steve could imagine how much his legs were aching so they dealt with the shower and food faster than usual. Steve left and let the Soldier stretch out on the bed for a whole hour. The man was on fire today after all. He deserved it.

Steve was writing down the results in his notebook, making changes in the programme. The tip of his pencil was all chewed-up because of his mental dilemmas about too little space and the impossibility of running. He got caught up. When he once again raised his head to the screen, he froze, transfixed, instantly forgetting what he was thinking about.

The Soldier was lying still, his breathing slow and deep. He was sleeping. The first time since Steve had begun working with him he fell asleep like a person, on his red cover. Steve looked into the monitor for a long time and clearly realized he wouldn’t be able to wake the Soldier. Wouldn’t dare. He wouldn’t dare even enter the Soldier’s room now for fear of startling him. 

It was so important… It had to be. Steve wanted to give him the possibility to take pleasure. For as long as he wanted and the way he wanted. Let him sleep.

He looked in the screen until little by little he started to feel drowsy. His head became heavy and dropped on his bruised arms, but he didn’t notice it, thinking he was going to lie like this for only about ten minutes…

Steve woke up with a start and saw to his terror that it had been at least three hours. The picture in the screen had changed. The Soldier was sitting at the table and writing something clumsily on a sheet of paper. Clumsily – because the sheet was shifting on the tabletop and the Soldier had nothing to press it.

Before Steve held his breath and wondered what that meant, the Soldier picked the sheet up and showed it to the camera.

‘Get your ass in here, Rogers!’

Steve gave a mournful sigh. Bucky looked angry and sleepy.

They were going to have a tough talk. Again. 

*

 “I thought we’d wanted to pull those codes out of me, not to fulfil them!”

Bucky was walking to and fro about the room. Steve was sitting in the chair and experiencing mixed feelings – the stings of remorse were mixing with the joy of seeing Bucky who’d once again become a real person. Besides, Steve definitely liked this ‘we’.

“This is the part of the therapy,” he said. “And it works so far.”

“Can this therapy of yours not bring me back to life?”

“When you say it like that, I feel as a spiritualist.” Steve thought a bit and added, “Or a necromancer.”

 “Ok,” Bucky noisily fell on the red cover. “Have it your way. Let’s assume you’ll succeed and the lullaby will work. What are you going to do with it then? Are you going to follow me all the time?”

“Perhaps. But it’s not necessary. If I manage to insert myself into your programme, I hope I’ll be able to gain control remotely, via conference calling. But if you want to take part…”

 “I’ve already told you.” Bucky frowned at him. “For me it’s the only chance to wash away my guilt. You’re giving me lessons on fighting without the arm and I’m grateful to you. On the other hand, I'm not comfortable with the fact that you’re depriving yourself of advantage over the Winter Soldier. Without the arm I’m less dangerous in trance and I can’t seriously hurt you. And you’re honing his technique and teaching him to attack you. Then again, those exercises with a teabowl…”

“It was cool. Tell me you didn’t like them!”

Bucky smirked almost cheerfully. Steve suddenly thought it was nearly the first time he’d reached the Soldier’s memories and experienced positive emotions. He needed to remember it.

“Anyway. The thing you’re doing is dangerous.”

“I know,” Steve nodded, “but I believe it’s worth it.”

“Pigheaded.”

Bucky smiled and his gray eyes seemed to start radiating a light.

“As for the future… I had an idea. But I’m not sure I should plan so far ahead.”

“Spill it.”

“The code doesn’t work when repeated.”

Steve said it and saw that Bucky understood him at once. And he didn’t like what he’d heard.

“I know, I tried. It’s like trying to enter a password again when you’re already in the system.”

“No reaction?”

“At all.”

“Yes, it’s clear then.” Bucky chuckled. “That’s why they introduced wipes after all. You can’t restart the code and the deactivation code doesn’t exist. They could only fry my brain to start over.”

“If you want to take part,” Steve hastily brought back the topic afraid that Bucky would stick in his memories. He felt uncomfortable when his friend talked about wipes like this, “I could read the code to you beforehand. Then no one will be able to program you anymore.”

Bucky chuckled joylessly.

“Then I’m going to miss out on all the fun.”

There was so much bitterness hidden in his voice one could touch it. Surprised, Steve watched his friend closely. Right. Exactly. It was like Bucky deeply resented him for something and was also depressed because Steve didn’t know or realize what for. Was it because he couldn’t belong to himself, but didn’t want to belong to Steve? It would make sense… if it were true. No, there was something else here. This grouch looked very much like…

Jealousy.

Trainings, tasks, the red cover. Did Bucky really think the Soldier was going to take his place?

“Buck,” Steve tried to sound as gently as possible. “It’s only for the start. Until we find a solution.”

“No,” Bucky snapped, shook his head and faced away. “You did not understand anything at all, Steve. It’s me who must atone the things I’ve done. Me, not him. You’re fussing over him so much it’s clearly for long. He’s already a person for you, not a programme. Do you even realize it’s not normal? He could look placid ‘til it’s you who reads the code, but when some sicko sets him at you, I’ll kill you!”

 “I realize that,” Steve didn’t try to object. “But you’re wrong, Buck. He is you. We need to rehabilitate both of you. Everything they did to you they did to him. It’s just that he’s less sensitive than you. But at the same time it means we can rehabilitate you via him. Because no matter how much you try, you won’t be able to overcome it by dropping all your horrible memories and the Soldier into one pit. It’ll rot there, swell like an abscess, fill with nightmares and psychosis. Without recovering him, I won’t be able to do anything for you. You can escape from yourself, Buck, but how far will you manage to run?”

“Buck,” he continued soothingly. “I’m not going to give it up anyway. If only I knew another way, I’d use it. If you know some other way, I’ll give up on the idea with a ‘lullaby’ and try it. But I need you to help me. ”

And Bucky sighed, calming down. Going somewhere else in his head as usual. Helplessness came back and dulled his eyes.

“I have no ideas,” he admitted. “If I knew what I should do with it, there would be fewer problems. If it works… If you’re sure it works, then do it. But even as a second fiddle I’m not of much use now. I can hardly put on my own clothes. Not to speak of handling a rifle and vehicles.”

“We’ll get you back your bionics as soon as we can.”

“You say it as if it’s not a problem.”

“I’m used to taking one problem at a time. Let’s deal with the code at first and then get you back on the line, okay?”

Bucky nodded obediently. Just like the Soldier.

“Maybe you’re hungry?” Steve asked hopefully. “I have some leftovers…”

“No. You better get me back to my rainbow ponies. I want to sleep. And don’t do it again,” he gave Steve a stern look. “Work with him if you want, but I refuse to take part in it.”

Steve raised his hands.

“Whatever you say, Buck. You’re going to remember everything anyway.”

“Exactly,” Bucky answered enigmatically, heading to the cryochamber.

While Steve was fastening him inside, he thought sadly that he considered this damned freezer a problem, too. But all in its proper time.

* 

Although Bucky grumbled at Steve’s high-handedness, since that day he’d stopped screaming while the code was being entered. He screwed up his face in pain, clenched his teeth and right fist and breathed heavily, overcoming the icy madness creeping into him. But he didn’t scream. Steve didn’t know if the reason was the fact that the Solder had fallen asleep naturally and Bucky had taken his place painlessly. Or it was because of that red cover. Anyway, there was clearly less discomfort now and Bucky went through it considerably easier.

Steve was happy about the progress, but he didn’t try to repeat this experiment.

He had no desire to argue with Bucky because of the Soldier.

*

Today was the first time since the leakage when it wasn’t Steve who was reading the code.

“Я жду приказаний.”

Steve watched T’Challa unfastening the Soldier from the base of the chamber and involuntary clenched and unclenched his fists, his whole body tense. Strange feelings fought inside him and cramped his stomach. Worry, anxiety and something else. Something private that concerned only him and the Soldier.

The man was standing in front of the Panther obediently and waiting for orders. First time in a while Steve felt his palms became sweaty from stress. It was the first check to trial the human factor.

“This man,” T’Challa pointed in Steve’s direction. “Make him kneel.” 

The Soldier submissively headed to him. Steve stepped toward.

“At ease, Солдат,” he said. As he did every morning.

The Soldier froze for a second. Frowned. Hesitated.

“Make him kneel!” the Panther’s stern voice echoed, and the Soldier rushed forward.

Power of the order, Steve remembered. The Soldier grabbed his arm, twisted it and pushed him roughly, making him hit the floor. Steve sank to his knees docilely with no resistance. There was no sense in resistance or in fighting. They needed to know if the Soldier followed the order or not. And he did it.

Steve wasn’t angry with the Panther. T’Challa acted tough to test the success and he said the same words an enemy would tell the Soldier in his place. No, Steve wasn’t angry. Or, rather, he was angry about another matter.

 “Well done, Солдат,” T’Challa said with barely perceptible sadness.

“Could you hold back from the praise?” Steve asked in a tight voice, feeling a sudden wave of burning jealousy.

 _This is my wolf!_ the thought stirred in his head.

The Soldier was still holding his arm.

It seemed to Steve he felt the Soldier’s warm fingers tremble.

 *

Back in his room, Steve closed the door and without turning on the lights slid down it on the floor, clutching his head with his hands tightly. Fool. What a fool! What did he hope for?! What could he oppose against the training which had violated Bucky’s mind for seventy years?! Overweening naïve fool. He'd believed in the tales which said it was really possible only through affection and kindness to get in good with the wolf trained to kill!

Steve was crying and didn’t notice it, but for some reason he had to breathe through his mouth, the floor was swaying and heavy drops fell from his eyes. He was sitting with his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. How on earth could he be such an idiot! Natasha was right. He was too naïve for this job.    

Natasha who had tamed Hulk. He thought if she’d managed to do it, he had a chance, too. Like a total idiot he had been glad about those little things, raylets, the ball, the red cover, signs and countersigns…

He needed to change something. To abandon this model in favour of something else, look for a strong assertive move… Steve had no ideas. No thoughts. Because he had to tear this idea out of his heart. It was nauseating to admit to himself that he’d gotten used to this routine. Or, rather, no…

He’d gotten used to the Soldier. To his impassivity and trainability. Steve lived these short meetings. This short and strange communication with Bucky who’d gone to the cold from his memory. What else could he do?!

It was the first time Steve felt very powerless. It was forceful, oppressive and palpable powerlessness. He felt small, miserable and unable to oppose anything against the force which was much stronger than him.

Like an ant and a boot.

Steve was crying silently in the dark. Now he understood Bucky’s state like never before.

* 

The Soldier behaved as if nothing had happened, and this made Steve feel even worse. He could hardly resist not snapping at him and the Soldier might feel it because during the whole day the man didn’t say anything besides the usual programme. When his free time began, he just sat on his red cover.

But then Steve noticed a strange gesture in the monitor. As if the Soldier… ran his hand over the cover. All the rest of the time he was just sitting without touching the magazines or turning on the music. Steve couldn’t wait anymore. 

“Is anything wrong?”

He entered the room and approached the bed. The Soldier didn’t lift his head looking into the void with his impassive blank stare.

“Do you need something? Are you in pain?”

“I attacked you,” the Soldier said suddenly.

“Today? Or you mean…”

“He ordered. And I attacked you. Why if only you work with me?”

He said it slowly and calmly without looking at Steve. It would be so easy to believe it was Bucky… except for cold stillness. No needless movements, almost lifeless tranquility.

“It was a test.”

“I failed it?”

Steve smiled weakly.

“ _I_ failed it. You did everything right.”

The Soldier nodded, like, yes, I understood and took note of it, but his pose – a bit, very slightly – expressed embarrassment. Only now the thought crossed Steve’s mind that the Soldier could be low-spirited, but he could still hardly believe it. The Soldier looked… guilty. As if he experienced the need to apologize, but didn’t know how to do or express it. As if this feeling was unfamiliar and therefore disturbed him.

“That’s the reason you haven’t been yourself the whole day?”

The Soldier didn’t answer. Either he didn’t understand the question or didn’t know how to answer it. Steve sat beside him.

 “Do you tell us apart? Those who give you orders?”

He wanted to say ‘those who read the code’, but the Soldier more likely had absolutely no idea about the code. Steve decided not to take the risk.

“You aren’t acting by the instruction,” the Soldier said suddenly like he’d done after that walk.

“From what I know about your instructions, I’d rather manage without them.”

The truth was Steve didn’t have any idea about HYDRA’s instructions and didn’t want to.

“Why? Did I violate some important paragraph?”

“You never wiped me. Even when I was unstable.”

“I won’t do it.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m not a monster. Because I want you to remember me. Destabilization is okay.”

“You’re working with me wrong. There’ll be problems.”

Steve raised his hand and tucked the Soldier’s hair behind his ear. He wanted to see the face covered with a curtain of long strands. This face’s expression changed for an instant, but too fleetingly. It was hard to understand it.

But Steve already noticed to himself – the human factor was really present. Not only because in the usual mode they were friends. He stood out to the Soldier. Steve behaved strangely, not like others, that’s why he stuck to the Soldier’s memory. Strange things attracted his attention more.

“Exactly,” Steve agreed. “For sure. Would you like it? Would you like me to keep working with you?”

The Soldier became thoughtful. Steve was ready to hear ‘Destabilization…’, but instead the man said, “I don’t know.” He frowned. “Is it important? Me wanting something? You often ask what I want.”

“Yes. It’s important for me that you have desires.”

“Why?”

It was a difficult question. Why.

Desire. Longing. The first word of the code.

While Steve worked over that stage he thought about it a lot. Books, music, the ball, ‘everything you want’… He needed to make Soldier look into himself and analyze his feelings. He suspected the Soldier firmly believed that his desires were of no importance. That they were irrelevant. But generally speaking a desire was the same need, the realization something was missing in order everything felt right, and then, ideally, even better.

When Steve had dulled the lights and given the Soldier the red cover (‘something red’ as he’d put it), he filled some of the Soldier’s needs which weren’t physiological. It was important. As if the presence of needs set a machine apart from a living being. Steve was sincerely happy the Soldier had those needs. That the Soldier was learning to pay attention to himself, look deep into himself, and the desire to have something read meant he did have that depth. He had unquenched needs for something. The lights were easy because it was always easier to realize what caused discomfort, not vice versa. But the red… it was something totally different. But to explain it simply so that he could understand…

The Soldier wouldn’t understand it if Steve told him ‘Because you’re my friend’. He wouldn’t understand ‘Because I care about you’. That it was natural for a person to want something. Steve wanted to express that in a way which would be clear.

Clear for the programme.

He moved a bit on the cover getting more comfortable. And suddenly realized.

“Do you like this cover?” Steve asked. Then he saw the man’s concentrated and confused expression and hastily rephrased, “Or, rather, not like this… Do you feel better because you have it?”

A nod. Certain and unequivocal.

“Now you have the answer,” Steve smiled. “If you feel better, everything’s going right. This is the point. That’s why you’re here and that’s why I’m working with you. To make you feel better. Got it?”

The Soldier thought about it for a long time. As if this idea were settling in him gradually and he was carefully turning it this and that fitting it to himself and the programme. It made adjustments in usual routine. He was allowed to want things. It was even preferable. It was connected with his functionality, with the fact that he’d lost his arm and was hurt. He wasn’t punished for that loss. It meant he’d done everything right. He was being recovered. He felt better. By reason of getting what he wanted he would feel better. Rehabilitation. 

The Soldier involuntarily ran with his hand over the cover once again. As if it was a mark. A symbol of something only he or Bucky could understand. Or it might be an echo of the past or some feelings and associations stored in their brain confusing for both of them.

Steve didn’t like hiding behind this wording. Rehabilitation. He’d far sooner say, ‘Because I want you to want something’ or try to express with simple words the idea ‘Because when you don’t have any desires, you turn into an instrument.’ But he didn’t say it like this. It strangely turned everything he did upside down. It didn’t look like he was fulfilling the Soldier’s wishes, but vice versa. Like it was the Soldier who with his right behavior was filling Steve’s needs.

And the single thought that the necessity of fulfilling the puppet player’s wishes was wired into the programme…

Steve closed his eyes. No, he wasn’t going to think about it.

He felt the bed cave in – the Soldier changed position. And then… gently pressed his forehead to Steve’s shoulder. Head-butted him weakly. The gesture from Brooklyn. An echo.

“Why did you do that?” Steve asked, dumb-founded, frozen and afraid of taking a breath or even turning his head.  

“I wanted,” a quiet answer followed, without any explanations.

Steve felt such heat in his chest that it got difficult to breathe. With a treacherous lump in his throat he looked at the Soldier.

“Attaboy,” he forced out.

He couldn’t bear it any longer, so he put out his hand, scooped up the Soldier in his arms and pulled him in close. He hugged the Soldier. Clumsily and awkwardly. Realizing how much he’d wanted to do it. How desperately he was in need of such a simple touch.

“Sorry,” Steve breathed out into the Soldier’s shoulder. “It’s already from the list of my wishes.”

The Soldier didn’t hug him back. Neither did he freeze like an obedient sheep, waiting out this sudden avalanche of body contact. He was just sitting, relaxed. Breathing deeply and evenly. Such a warm Bucky… Smelling like home. Like tranquility.

Steve pressed his forehead to the man’s shoulder and closed his eyes.  

It was so quiet it seemed the crackling of the programme’s interference in the Soldier’s head could be heard. 

* 

That’s just the way you work, you see. There’s always someone who’s read the code, that’s why the Winter Soldier can’t exist without a Master.

The Soldier has to have a Master. So I’ll become the one. The only one. I will get so deep into your programme where no one can ever get. Even if they know the code, even if they lose their voices bellowing those words – it’s only me who’ll be your Master. Only me, you hear?

Because I’ll make it so that you’ll let me into your programme willingly. 

*

_White Fang was torn by conflicting feelings, impulses. It seemed he would fly to pieces, so terrible was the control he was exerting, holding together by an unwonted indecision the counter-forces that struggled within him for mastery._

_The hand descended. Nearer and nearer it came. It touched the ends of his upstanding hair. He shrank down under it. It followed down after him, pressing more closely against him. Shrinking, almost shivering, he still managed to hold himself together. It was a torment, this hand that touched him and violated his instinct. He could not forget in a day all the evil that had been wrought him at the hands of men. But it was the will of the god, and he strove to submit._

 

 


	6. STAGE THREE (A)

STAGE THREE

  
  
“At ease, Солдат.”

Steve raised his hand and traced a line on the Soldier’s forehead, from left to right, as if he wiped off some dirt or sweat.

The Soldier blinked in surprise and stared. But he said and did nothing.

“Who am I?”

“You’re Steve,” the Soldier answered. “You’re working with me.”

“Do you remember the routine?”

When the Soldier nodded, Steve gave a satisfied nod in reply.

“Then go warm up, wash yourself and I’ll see you at breakfast.”

Following the Soldier’s wide back with his eyes and hearing the mats crunch under his feet, Steve allowed himself to draw a deep breath. He knew he’d have to introduce a touch signal system, but he didn’t think it’d be so complicated. No, rather, there was nothing difficult in introducing a signal sign. Waiting for the response was what was difficult. Steve had chosen that particular sign. To trace a line with his thumb across the Soldier’s forehead with a short pause on the temple. The Soldier blinked every time, in surprise and kinda slowly, as if trying to shake off drowsiness. The look in his eyes becoming surprised with a sort of intelligence.  

Steve considered touching the head more important than other body parts. He rejected touching hands like Natasha and Banner had done – such tactics didn’t suit the Soldier. A touch had to be recognizable, not too complicated to manage it when needed, but at the same time not so simple, to avoid making it during a close fight. Everyone tried to protect their head so it was hard to make such a touch casually. Steve was sure he’d chosen it right.  
But waiting for the response was agonizing. Besides, what kind of a response would it be?

He didn’t give up. Kept away even the thoughts of giving up.

I’ll fuse them into you, Soldier. My own signs and countersigns.

There were problems with that. Steve made the sign and didn’t explain it, leaving the Soldier in doubt.

The Soldier was generally mistrustful, and his program was even more so. Like a properly brought up child, it didn’t trust people who were kind with no reason. Plus that reason had to be clear for the program.  
Steve couldn’t explain the concept of _friendship_ to the Soldier. Any actions just for pleasure were beyond the Soldier’s understanding, so Steve had to disguise care with usefulness. Rehab, some strategic needs. It wasn’t easy for Steve and weighed on him, but in this case he had to play by the rules. He’d already understood that only with a reason would the Soldier behave naturally. If Steve did something for no special reason, with no explanation or with too much free choice… At the best it puzzled the program and the Soldier grew suspicious, as if he were inherently sure there was some catch in Steve’s words and actions. That it was a test and his answers and reactions were going to be considered as right or wrong ones. And he would be punished for the latter.

At the best. At the worst his eyes faded, his face became sullen. He looked at Steve, burnt out like a match, and it seemed he wasn’t here, he went someplace else in his head and retreated deep into himself. As if this Steve’s behaviour meant the beginning of an experiment. Who knew, maybe something like this really had happened to him.

That’s why any tasty food was ‘energy, vitamins and recovery’ in the first place. That’s why ‘music helps relaxation and it’s useful for you now’. That’s why pleasant things were cloaked in usefulness.

The Soldier did understand usefulness. He felt his own significance and value as a combat element.

He hadn’t believed Steve. At least, not completely. He had taken note of that ‘I took you from HYDRA’, but he didn’t trust the words too much. He knew everything could change. That’s why he was still quietly waiting for punishments, for wipes and experiments. Not from Steve, and that was already progress. But still… the echo happened.

But at that particular moment, at the very beginning, Steve had used the program’s shock to his advantage. He made a signal sign and the program got stuck, trying to quickly analyze what that had been about. The Soldier wasn’t hurt, it was neither a question nor an order nor one of the familiar secret signs. The action with no explanation. This shock drew the program to the source of that sign and brought it to full power.

In other words, the Soldier immediately looked at him, right in his eyes, as if this gesture focused him on Steve. Only after that Steve asked, “Do you know who I am?” And got the answer. Every time. The Soldier looked in his eyes.

And recognized him. Instantly.  
*   


It was the first time they had to use the examination room as medical. Steve was angry and frustrated. The Soldier had been working on jumps on the balance beam. He had been learning to gain speed, push off and do a somersault, landing on his feet. During one of the tries he had miscalculated his fall and hurt his elbow so seriously it’d started to bleed.

Worse than that, Steve hadn’t been near the Soldier. He’d left to meet their waiter with food and hadn’t managed to control the situation. Usually he spotted for the Soldier during such exercises. Even worse, Steve didn’t remember if he’d asked the Soldier to stop the training when they’d heard a knock at the outer door. It kept sitting heavy on his mind. Had he? Or hadn’t?

He, as usual, was giving a lecture on why the Soldier needed to care for himself. He was feeling the man’s elbow checking if the bones were intact and wiping the wide bleeding abrasion with antiseptic. The Soldier was observing his actions in silence.

“Bucky,” he said suddenly.

Steve choked on the unfinished phrase.

“What?” he asked, dumbfounded.

“Sometimes you call me Bucky. Why?”

Steve heaved a long sigh. He tried to watch himself, but apparently didn’t always succeed.

 “It’s hard to explain,” he said with a sad smile. “At least without you starting to report destabilization.”

The Soldier nodded and didn’t raise the topic again. In his system ‘hard to explain’ was interpreted as ‘it means it’s not important’. It was the first time Steve thought he couldn’t tell him, I call you this because you don’t exist, and Bucky is you, that’s just because you’re sleeping and remember nothing. It was… different. Some different existence whose name Steve didn’t know, but which wasn’t less real than Bucky.

And wasn’t less valid.

*  
  
Gradually Steve’s intonations gained strength, he left the cautious language behind and started talking calmly, confidently, and warmly. Sure, he talked to the wolf trained to kill by order and the work with the Soldier looked for Steve like a process of neutralization of a bomb with loads of multicoloured wires.

But Natasha had done it. Natasha had tamed Hulk. Steve knew how she and Banner had worked. Bruce had voluntarily put himself in Hulk’s mode. First, they’d found out who of the team Hulk didn’t take a dislike to, and then Natasha had stayed with Hulk one-on-one, just sitting across from him. She had talked to him. And only then – she’d offered her hand.

And they’d opened a bottle of champagne when, for the first time, Hulk had offered his own hand, touching the woman’s thin palm.

*  


“Size ten roller blades?”

The Panther’s eyebrows flew up. Steve looked down sheepishly, resisting the strange urge to scrape the sole of his shoe along the floor while T’Challa was looking through the list.

“If it’s troublesome…”

“I’ll get them,” T’Challa said, smiling. “On one condition. I must witness this.”

*  


The Soldier’s reaction to a stranger was utter indifference. Steve felt much more awkwardly. It was the first time he was showing the result beyond the checks and he experienced the mix of worry and for some reason shame as if there was something intimate in his communication with the Winter Soldier, something he wouldn’t like to demonstrate in front of a stranger.

But he chased this feeling away. After all, the ‘lullaby’ was being created precisely for the situation when there were a lot of people around, familiar and not, and he wouldn’t have time for sentiments there.

T’Challa kept quiet and the first greeting-response stage worked out like clockwork.

*   


Steve had prudently piled the mats near the far wall, clearing a large space of smooth concrete floor. The Soldier clung to his hand, relaxing and dangerously clenching his fingers again when his disobedient roller blades drove him back and forth. They were only standing so far. T’Challa was modestly smiling up his sleeve, looking at Steve who was trying to explain to the Soldier about balance, body bend, the gravity center and stability.

Steve hadn’t had either roller blades or skates in his childhood. Now he wished he’d asked for a pair for himself, too, to understand the principle of it and explain better. The Soldier fell three times. For the first time Steve offered him his hand and helped him regain his footing - not without effort because the roller blades slid on the concrete and Steve had to prop them with his own feet before the Soldier got upright again.  

Back on his feet, the Soldier looked Steve up and down sulkily and pointedly, as if saying ‘My Master’s an idiot’. Steve had already seen a lot of pics like this on the Internet so he cast his eyes down sheepishly. And the Soldier began to move, gradually finding his feet and getting the point. When he fell again, he raised his hand, asking Steve to stay put and at the same time showing he could recover his feet on his own. So he got up, with some effort but without any help, stayed still for a while, then pushed off fluidly and moved ahead changing his feet, one more time and more…

Surprised and proud, Steve watched him move carefully, frowning, listening to himself. He was looking for his gravity center, regulating his body position, bending his knees. The Soldier wasn’t afraid of falling, they’d trained falls a lot of times. The only thing Steve worried about was fall backwards. The Soldier had a tough head, but concussion wasn’t a nice outcome even for supersoldiers.  
The third time he fell, avoiding running into the wall and trying to figure out how to stop, he recovered his feet immediately. Stubbornly and confidently. He was starting to get better at it. He was growing bold, he began to move faster and faster, at first on the straight, from one wall to another, then in wide circles. His trainability was fantastic.

“Well done!” Steve shouted to him, smiling from ear to ear and watching the Soldier skitter circle-wise.

The Soldier looked at him and… the corners of his mouth twitched weakly. A shadow, an echo of Bucky’s smile, but Heaven knows… that was it. Not because of his wish to smile. That smile was reflective as if he couldn’t hold back the joy overcoming him. The elation. The thrill of his own success.

Steve’s chest felt mercilessly stuffy, his heart tight, choking tears stuck in his throat like a lump. Amazed, T’Challa just shook his head near him. Steve had almost forgotten about him, looking only at the Soldier.

_“Holy smoke!” Matt exclaimed. “Look at ’m wag his tail!”_

Steve realized he was smiling and couldn’t help it. So much happiness was filling him that wild heartbeats were bursting his ribcage. If he was Weedon Scott and T’Challa – Matt the dog-musher (Steve instantly rejected that idea since it was blasphemous and reeked of racism), then Beauty Smith must’ve been HYDRA. So not without inner triumph, looking at the Soldier move around the room confidently and almost effortlessly, Steve thought the day would soon come when even after ‘freight cars’ this guy would get them by the throat with delight.

You’re going to give them hell, wolf, aren’t you?

For some reason Steve recalled that Hercules had dipped his arrows in the venom of the Lernean Hydra which he’d defeated…

*   


“What should I do?”

“Whatever you want. It’s your free…”

Steve didn’t finish his phrase. The Soldier raised his hand and slowly, barely touching, traced the signal sign on his forehead.  
*  


Since that day he began to look at Steve in the most difficult moments. Freezing. Before that he used to stare into the void absently while Steve had been fastening him to the base of the cryochamber. Now he looked at Steve. He watched Steve’s hands. Caught Steve’s eyes when the glass was going up and Steve couldn’t read the expression in those eyes. It was agonizing. He was itching to blow the chamber to kingdom come. Because defrosting… might be painful…

But every time the Soldier closed his eyes before crystal cold enveloped him. And Steve felt a bit better. Just a little. Until next time.

*

 

After what he’d seen T’Challa came to the conclusion the lab was too small for them, so he provided them the whole fenced court-yard for training. Being a strategic site, the laboratory facilities were enclosed with a high fence topped with electrified wire and equipped with video surveillance and armed guards.

That’s why, to avoid the risk of accidents, Steve and his Soldier were given one hour from four to five in the morning. It suited everyone. It suited Steve because at that time the laboratory complex was almost empty. It suited the Soldier (at least Steve thought so) because moist air carrying delightful smells from the jungle was still cool and fresh at that time of day. It suited the others because they didn’t have to cross a programed guy trained to kill.  
So no one, except maybe a couple of indifferent cameras, saw Steve Rogers tell his one-armed grim companion quickly and with a smile, “Keep up!” and hear something like an approving growl behind his back. They did laps around the court-yard of the complex, at first unhurriedly, then brisking up their pace, chase-like, and in the end they scampered like blazes at stunning speed, either racing or chasing each other. Then they sat under the palm, breathing heavily in the intoxicating pre-dawn air and sharing a bottle of more or less cold - for the present - water.

At times like that Steve felt almost happy. Just like now.

“Are you okay?” He passed water to the tired Soldier, scratching his shin which had been bitten by something.

Flies. The plague of Egypt. Everything flying and almost everything crawling were biters here. Steve had already seen ants as long as his finger phalanx and several times tropical butterflies the size of his hand here in the yard.

Two egrets flew in the sky overhead. They could hear cries from the green sea of jungles over the wall, in the distance something was roaring and bellowing, whistling and screeching. They could hear crackling of branches, cadenced noise of waterfalls – sounds of faraway wild life. The Equator, what could you say?

There were several palm trees in the territory of the base. Maybe as a disguise or for some other reasons… Anyway, they shaded the spacious court-yard quite well. In one palm’s crown an invisible bird twittered liltingly and loudly.  
Steve liked that solitude. He liked no one could see them fight with African hardwood sticks, breaking them with a crack against each other’s shoulders, stomachs and backs. Roll in the dust tangled in each other’s bear-hugs. No one could see a one-armed strong man run rampant like a wolf set free, overcoming hastily piled obstacles. Looking at him, Steve felt, well… good.

Now they took turns in the shower, ate with an appetite and looked at each other more often. The expression Steve saw in the Soldier’s eyes at those moments he could consider as sated satisfaction.

And he held his breath when an hour after meals the Soldier stretched himself tiredly and with gusto just in his presence for the very first time, cracking with his joints and driving pleasant vibrant weariness along his body.    
*  


Once a fortnight special days were planned. The treatment days. Steve, feeling a bit shy, called it so – treatments, though there was nothing wrong with bathing. There should’ve been nothing wrong.

A bath-tub had been a very luxurious thing in New York. Although thereafter life had provided all kinds of services to Steve, taking a bath still remained almost a sacrament. Not an entirely clear one – showering was much faster – but definitely pleasant. It would be a sin not to use the chance when the far corner of the treatment room, temporarily closed, held a round in-floor bath-tub with a step, not very deep, but four people could fit in it, without touching their elbows. There was a cast-iron hand-rail on the wall, along with a tap and a little shower.

Steve had been going around it for a while ‘til he’d come up with the idea of how they could put it to better use. He’d deliberately rejected bubble bath. Local climate and plant variety suggested using other stuff, that’s why Steve, slightly ashamed, on T’Challa’s advice consulted with local healers, acquired aromatic decoctions made of thyme, tamarind and cypress leaves, native species of purpleheart; pandan and many other unfamiliar fruits, flowers and seeds. A lot of those decoctions were used in traditional medicine and magic rituals here, but Steve chose them relying entirely on their smell and safety. Bathing Bucky in poisonous juices of local flora wasn’t his intention

As a result, the treatment room was filled with exotic scents and the warm, almost hot water after adding the decoctions was the colour of strong tea.

For the first time the Soldier was alert and looked clearly distrustful, but he stripped and sank into the water submissively. He usually got dressed and undressed on his own. Steve had only made sure there weren’t any buttons and zippers on his white clothing. He turned away and didn’t watch the process, but he had to watch the Soldier get into the water. The hand-rail was on the left and Steve was afraid the Soldier might lose his footing and fail to grip something. His coordination was already not so bad, but still…

His worries were unfounded. The Soldier slid down the side of the bath, got in the water immediately and, sinking up to his neck, uttered a stifled surprised sigh. Steve had sent him here shortly after the cryochamber without the usual warm-up, so the temperature difference might have overwhelmed him. Besides, it looked like delight to sink into fragrant warm water, because the Soldier’s dubious face turned to astonished and then to almost serene and relaxed. Scented steam curls were wreathing around him and the Soldier, engrossed in this almost unbearable bliss, closed his eyes ecstatically, lying back against the sloping bath side. Looking at the ceiling, he took several deep breaths for a try.   
For the first time Steve didn’t dare to approach him for a while, standing at the door and giving him time to laze and enjoy it. But then he thought the water would get cold soon, so he moved closer carefully and met the soft and drowsy Soldier’s bleary eyes. The man frowned a bit, as if he was trying to remember something or gather his thoughts, but in the end he gave it up and just followed Steve with his eyes in silence.

Steve set to procedures. At the beginning he acted a bit hesitatingly, then - far easier.  
He washed the Soldier’s hair with aromatic shampoo, asking him to throw his head back, massaged it and stroked behind the ears, combed his hair with his fingers to distribute the foam evenly. Then he rinsed it with the small hand-held shower and soapy water streamed along the trough to the drain, not to the bath tub.

Steve shaved off the Soldier’s stubble. He didn’t have to do it too often, because the Soldier was awake for only three hours a day and the facial hair didn’t really grow when he was asleep in ice. The Soldier didn’t pay any real attention to it, so Steve sometimes shaved him in the morning. The first time he was doing it the Soldier told him, “I can do it myself.”

“You can,” Steve agreed, tapping a razor on the sink. “It’s just not very convenient with one hand.”

Since that the Soldier made no other comments.

Steve trimmed his fingernails and toenails. Bucky would probably hit him for that or demand Steve to hang a fine sandpaper sheet on the wall, call it a scratching mat and the matter of manicure would be settled. But the Soldier wasn’t Bucky, so he obediently let Steve care for him without any questions, only tilted his head to the side a bit wonderingly.

Steve didn’t cut his hair though. Washed it and combed it, sitting behind the Soldier. But didn’t try to cut it. Bucky had left it long when he’d come to his senses, besides, Steve had already got used to it.

The hair got tangled, a wooden comb was uncomfortable and sometimes pulled the hair, so Steve began combing carefully, from the very tips, holding the hair near the back of the Soldier’s head with his left hand. The Soldier relaxed quite quickly and brought his tense shoulders down. Steve had already got pretty good at combing his hair without pulling it too much. Without disturbing that fragile peace. Steve just liked running his fingers through that hair.

After completing the procedures Steve always did the same thing. He held the Soldier’s head with his hand, stroke the man’s high forehead with his thumb and unchangingly, again and again, traced the signal sign against the wet skin. That meant it was time for the last stage. The washing itself. With a soapy sponge Steve scrubbed the Soldier’s back, almost down to the tailbone, and his right arm from the shoulder to the fingers, washed the scars near the bionic stump, trying not to get it too wet. Then the sponge was passed to the Soldier and the man took care of the rest of his body on his own. Meanwhile Steve was setting water temperature and pressure.  
Steve pulled the drain stopper out, gave the shower to the Soldier, fetched a big towel and, spreading it in front of him, wrapped his arms around the wet body smelling of unfamiliar wild herbs, fruit and bark. Wrapped him in it. And smiled in response to a sullen look.

After bathing there followed a meal and then the Soldier had his free time ‘til he was completely dry.

Steve both liked and didn’t like those days. He enjoyed them so much it scared him. Anyway, he should’ve been honest with himself. Those days he liked the Winter Soldier, mellow and basking. In those moments Steve felt a stab of exquisite tantalizing tenderness for him and then he was always ashamed of his own feelings.

I’ll be your Master, Soldier. Because you’ll want it yourself. You’ll want only me to rule you. I’ll make this desire stronger than the power of order.  

*   


It happened after the workout, when they were taking rest under the palm tree they’d chosen. It was almost light out, they both were sweaty after the run and wet hot air was hard to breathe in.

“We need to go,” Steve said.

The Soldier got up immediately, Steve followed him and…

The following events happened too fast even for him. He scrambled to his feet, his hand on the palm trunk, making a wide-branching tree crown rustle alarmingly, and a moment later something springy hit Steve’s shoulder and slipped to his back. He didn’t even have any time to feel surprise and he just began to turn around when the Soldier rushed to him, brushed his fingers along Steve’s back, withdrew his hand abruptly, and Steve realized with horror…  
…He’d grabbed a snake in the wrong way.

Not its head as it was supposed to be done, but the middle of its narrow flexible scaly bright-green body. That’s why the Soldier had no time to unclasp his fingers, and the snake, twisting, bit into his forearm with lightning speed, sinking its little V-shaped head’s teeth into his arm. A green bush viper. Without even wincing, the Soldier swung and threw the snake in a high arc – it hit the wire, then there was short crackling and the limp body fell to the ground in a shower of electrical sparks.  
And the Soldier was staring owlishly at his arm with two tiny bloody holes, dripping with clear yellowish liquid, where a white piece of the snake’s tooth was seen. It was hardly bigger than a bee’s sting.

Steve immediately woke from his stupor.

“Sit.”

He grabbed the Soldier’s arm, forcefully made him sit under the palm and dropped to his knees near him. Then he pulled the Soldier’s arm towards himself, pressed his mouth to the wound, sucked the poison out and spat the piece of the tooth along with bitter saliva and blood. Then sucked again, drawing the skin fiercely into his mouth. The Soldier, blinking in surprise, was watching his actions.

“Snake venom isn’t going to kill me. I digest it,” he said quietly.

“I know. Shut up.”

He felt an unpleasant astringent taste in his mouth. The snake’s teeth were definitely long because two pinpoint wounds were still bleeding pretty badly. Steve hoped the Soldier wouldn’t start convulsing. He hardly remembered what exactly that viper’s venom did to an ordinary person nor was he sure he hadn’t confused it with a green mamba, but he knew for sure even a supersoldier, who wasn’t going to be killed by the venom, would have to suffer through an hour or even more ‘til it was fully consumed.

People were already hurrying to them. Three men and a woman in white coats and two more people in military uniform. Without distracting from the wound, Steve waved at the place where the snake had fallen and, spitting, explained to the tense Soldier, “I’ve pushed the emergency button.”

A man sprinted in the indicated direction and returned carrying the dead snake by its tail in his outstretched arm. The rest of them were exchanging wary glances as if they didn’t dare to come closer.

“It’s okay.” Steve still spoke poor Bantu dialects, but this phrase was one of the first he’d learnt. Then he added in English, “He’s stable.”

He looked at the Soldier. The man nodded. Only then the doctors rushed to them.  
*   


T’Challa, looking gloomy, appeared an hour later and told Steve off like a naughty boy, but he was still glad everyone had stayed alive. Snakes regularly got to the territory of the facility. There was a tropical forest nearby and no one could do anything about it. The Soldier had been injected with anti-ophidic serum right away. The Black Panther warned he shouldn’t be frozen ‘til his body fought the venom and in general it would be better not to bother him in the next several hours. Steve was totally against any strangers communicating with the Soldier so he assured the Panther he’d handle it on his own.

He would long remember those four hours.  
The Soldier was lying under his red cover, his breath shallow and fast. His forehead was covered with tiny beads of cold sweat, his swollen arm was in a sling. Steve, tormented by his own helplessness, brought water and a whole pitcher of pineapple juice and gave him some every fifteen minutes, as recommended.

“Steve,” the Soldier called, and Steve shuddered a bit at his quiet voice. “I can’t see.”

“They’d warned something like this might happen. Blindness wouldn’t last long.”

He was afraid of touching the Soldier’s arm so he stroked the shaggy hair on the top of the man’s head. Holding him by the shoulders, Steve helped the Soldier sit up (he still felt weak) and pressed a glass rim to his mouth. The Soldier swallowed heavily, some water splashed out on his white undershirt. Steve thought Bucky would skin him alive for that. Not for a shirt of course, for giving him a drink out of his hand.

“You shouldn’t have done it.” Steve settled him on the bed again. “It’s your last arm, after all, you should take care of it. I digest snake venom, too, so the bite wouldn’t have become lethal anyway.”

“Danger…”

“Yes, it was dangerous.”

Steve stopped himself because he realized ‘danger assessment’ might be foreign to the Soldier. He’d moved and grabbed the snake reflexively as he’d reacted without thinking. Not because he’d understood and recognized what it was or imagined the snake biting Steve.

“I was just scared for you.”  
“You shouldn’t have done it, either,” the Soldier said suddenly.

Steve was confused for a moment.

“Done what? Be scared?”

“Help. Suck out the venom.”

Steve felt his face blushing involuntarily, but he quickly whisked away unwanted associations.

“Have I done anything against the rules again?” he asked.

“It’s not right,” the Soldier stated quietly.

He was staring past Steve with his wet blind eyes and his face was almost pained.

“You’re wrong… You were a wrong mission… and now you’re a wrong handler.”

“A wrong mission?”

“You lifted it. It pressed… You helped though I shot you.”

The Soldier’s fingers were cold, almost ice-cold, and Steve unknowingly squeezed his hand more tightly, even without noticing when and how he’d covered it with his own palm.

“A piece of a beam,” he gasped hoarsely, getting back to the events from two years ago. “You were pinned down on the helicarrier.”

“Missions don’t act like that. You’re a wrong mission…”

“And now I’m a wrong handler,” Steve smirked sadly. His heart hurt. “Is it bad?”

“It’s… different.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“No. It’s not bad.”

“I’m glad. Get some rest. Wrong or not, I’m still going to look after you. Sleep.”

It seemed to Steve the Soldier had been waiting for his permission because the man closed his eyes and fell right to sleep. Steve still held his hand and the Soldier’s fingers gradually turned warmer.

Steve woke him three hours later, stroking his forehead, already dry and warm. Bucky woke up as the Soldier, looked around blearily and his eyes rested on the cryochamber.

“’s time to sleep?” he asked in a husky voice.

His question would make no sense for someone who didn’t know what that really meant. Steve’s chest felt stuffy and he touched the Soldier’s artificial shoulder when the man attempted to get up.

“No,” Steve said quietly, but firmly, surprised at himself. “Just drink some more.”

He wanted to help, but the Soldier took the glass from his hand. His fingers still trembled a bit, but he held the glass steadily and confidently. His sight was back.

“Lie down.”

The Soldier obeyed and Steve put the cover over him to his very neck.

“You’re… the man on the bridge…” the Soldier mumbled half asleep. “Wrong…”

“What I am.” Steve stroked his hair and traced the line across his forehead with his thumb.

The Soldier gave a short nod under his hand.

“I know you,” he whispered. “You remind me of something good…”

And almost immediately after that he dropped off into a deep sleep without noticing how hard his words had hit Steve. Steve kept stroking and brushing his hair.

Bucky’s hair. It was Bucky who’d been bitten by a snake and it was Bucky who’d wake up in the morning. And he would be out of sorts for sure.

Anyway, Steve would somehow reason with Bucky. Refer to strict doctor’s orders. It was almost a truth after all. Almost. The truth was Steve didn’t have the heart to put the Soldier on ice. For the second time.

The Soldier was right. He was a wrong handler. Very wrong.

*   


Steve had been thinking about it a lot. About the Soldier’s selective memory. It took him a lot of time to understand the principle of its functioning, but now Steve thought he’d figured it out.

‘The Winter Soldier’ mode was a pure function. If he got an MRI, it might clearly show that not all of Bucky’s brain worked in a trance and some areas slept. Except for battle fury, the Soldier wasn’t bound by emotions, including fear, even his self-preservation instinct was turned off or dulled. Steve had often remembered sleepwalkers. Bucky was sleeping, but it wasn’t a dream. It was like being half-asleep or half-awake. Only half of his brain worked. That was why the Winter Soldier was so efficient. He was literally a computer, a machine, which worked at max conserve. Sure, a lot of functions weren’t available at that mode, but the rest of operations were performed much faster and more effective.    
That was a supersoldier. Nothing extra.

He didn’t even think in the usual sense, he didn’t try to access the memory of the past, he didn’t have either associative thinking or value judgment. The Soldier was a pure experience. With no fear or doubt, with no questions about purpose or morality issues. A trained wolf. The Soldier didn’t even have the idea of _himself_ in his world view. Didn’t have any self-awareness. Or rather… it was some form of absolute self-awareness. Absolute understanding of his function and capabilities. The Soldier didn’t even need a name. He didn’t even seek to know who he was, what his name was, how old he was, confining himself to the functional knowledge – ‘I do what this man tells me to do’. He knew whose orders to take, he knew commands. And he knew he existed here and now.

And asking him about James Barnes? It might be like trying to switch from an economy mode to a normal one by the analogy Steve didn’t like. He looked at the Soldier as if he was White Fang.

But he needed another comparison for a better understanding of the Soldier’s mind.

The Soldier’s selective memory was the result of his limited functions. His program strictly sorted all data, coming from the sensory organs, into ‘important’ and ‘irrelevant’. ‘Important’ included new experience, skills, actions, competencies and observations, which remained in the memory after following loadings and were recorded in general experience. That was about fighting, languages, handling of weapons and technology – everything that concerned more effective performance.    
‘Irrelevant’ was almost everything else. It was cast aside as useless, more than likely even independently from the Soldier’s consciousness, and wasn’t used during the following loadings of the program. Thus, the Winter Soldier didn’t remember his victims’ faces and names, places and dates of his missions. He could name a killing method. The nature of the mission – protection, elimination, intrusion, subtraction. He could remember what exactly he was doing during the assignment – shooting, riding a bike, using some language. What was more, he was using it unconsciously, too, not realizing he knew it ‘til he heard the question and answered it. From his experience he could navigate the terrain he’d already visited, realizing he knew the place. It was memory turned to knowledge. He took a gun and knew what it was and how to fire it, he knew he could do it, had done it before and his hand was familiar with the sensation. But when and under what circumstances he had learnt it and who had taught him… that was ‘irrelevant’.  

Steve had stumbled over that word at the very beginning of their communication. ‘Irrelevant’ was by no means assessing the relevance of the requested information. It was the message that Steve was requesting data the Soldier didn’t have access to in that mode. When Steve had tried to get to Bucky, using his authority as a handler, he’d sent a request to the program for the information beyond the Soldier’s database. It’d resulted in setbacks with a natural outcome. Aggression or silence. As if…

As if you started asking a person in their dream how they’d gotten here, where they were from, what their name was… There was no time and memory of oneself in a dream. Although the Winter Soldier wasn’t Bucky’s dream… Steve had done just that. He was trying to wake him up. When you started thinking about real stuff in your dream, the dream started ‘swimming’. An unpleasant feeling, as if reality began shifting. You shouldn't wake a sleepwalker.  
But the absence of access didn’t mean the absence of memory. Bucky remembered everything. It was like he was functioning in a usual mode, ‘important’ and ‘irrelevant’ merged inside of him. That was why he remembered more – names, faces, localities, dates. His serum helped him remember everything in fine detail. Bucky processed the whole package of the Soldier’s memory, compartmentalized it and, on the basis of his already formed views, established priorities, assessed those memories and coloured them with emotions. When Steve began to work with Soldier directly, he, without knowing it, had made it a point to move from ‘irrelevant’ to ‘significant’ and then to ‘top-priority’. To the system directories. Like a hacker. Or a dog trainer. He wanted to teach the program to recognize him. He wanted it to assign him the highest status. The highest possible. He’d already been in the program’s memory; the Soldier remembered him. He needed only to secure his position.  

That was why Steve had repeated code phrases and gestures again and again, that was why he’d looked for intonations for so long, ‘til he’d arrived at the ‘significant’ memory unit. When the Soldier had started to navigate the situation, recognize him and anticipate his words.

Yes, the Soldier remembered him. The program remembered all extraordinary events, and the Soldier himself had told Steve, ‘You’re a wrong mission’. A strange one. The mission’s new atypical behaviour had imprinted in ‘significant’. Sure, that fact couldn’t have saved him from the Soldier because, besides the general units ‘significant’ and ‘irrelevant’, there was the third one – ‘irrelevant for the current assignment.’ In other words, when the Soldier had tried to dice Steve with that helicopter, he’d known that his opponent was Captain America, the same person who’d removed a beam from him on the helicarrier. The wrong mission. But thanks to Zemo, at that moment for the current assignment, a ‘wrong’ mission had automatically meant a ‘problematic’ one. For that reason the Soldier had thrown him into the shaft and broken the helicopter. Steve had already been listed in his experience as an enemy who was really hard to outrun.  
Even more than that. When Steve had tried to break the code from outside, calling on Bucky’s memory, he’d talked to the Soldier. The person who had limited memories about the helicarrier (Steve was sure the decision to save him from the Potomac belonged to Bucky and the Soldier couldn’t have any information about that event); the person who’d knocked the Avengers around in Berlin as if they were tenpins and who’d squeezed Steve’s throat when the helicopter had dragged him down, into the water.

So he remembered Steve. All Steve needed now was to change his status from inside.

He didn’t believe it was impossible. The program was alive. The ‘irrelevant’ unit had been erased by wipes before, but no one had been wiping the Soldier for two years. The program started to expand, acquire new experience, and use the things which were earlier classified as ‘irrelevant’ – wishes and emotions. Judgements like ‘good’ and ‘bad’. Something he’d like to remember. He was developing character, habits and traits. Perhaps, the day would soon come when a temper and self-sufficiency started growing in him.    
The Soldier was slowly coming to life. But he was. Steve wanted to be a good master to him, and the Soldier was gradually getting used to him. The words he’d said… ‘You remind me of something good’. Steve had nothing to do with anything good for the Soldier. It looked like an echo of Bucky’s memory. Was the line starting to blur? Or no?

Anyway… This wolf already belonged to him. Every handler probably gets attached to their beast.  
*   


The next day Bucky vomited pretty hard, he only drank water and ate almost nothing except tiny bits of a bland corn pancake. He grumbled a lot that someone must have neglected weapon safety rules since he felt like a crap although he was sober. He stubbornly continued to call the Soldier a weapon, but Steve didn’t correct him, too happy to see his friend alive and sane and acting as usual.

He missed Bucky. Those two were different after all.

First thing, Bucky got rid of the sling and examined the bruise around the bite left by Steve’s mouth. But he didn’t comment on it. Then he asked a few questions about the progress. And then he remembered he’d told Steve not to allow the Soldier to sleep outside the cryochamber and grumbled a lot again.  
*

  
_White Fang was in the process of finding himself. In spite of the maturity of his years and of the savage rigidity of the mould that had formed him, his nature was undergoing an expansion._  

*

 

“Do you know me? Don’t try to remember everything in detail…”

The Soldier raised his hand and repeated the signal sign, making Steve fall silent in shock in the middle of the sentence.

“You’re Steve,” he said. “I know you.”

So Steve swallowed the rest of his words because he realized they didn’t need them today and would hardly need them tomorrow.

This stage was already over.


	7. STAGE THREE (B)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for a nervous breakdown, mentions of gore, kissing and masturbation.

*   
The fog was rising up from the tropical forest. Here clouds were born and here they, heavy with water, gave birth to it, copiously showering the forest. Outside a real cloudburst was coming down. Steve decided to take a break from training for a couple of days. After all, the snake bite and bad weather made it nice to put the time to good use and spend it with pleasure, warm and cozy. Although… Steve was still unsure about pleasure and usefulness. But he’d taken a few lessons from local experts just like he’d done earlier in Washington. He’d thought he could use that skill…

“Get on your stomach.”  
The Soldier, stripped down to his underwear, obeyed without question, though his eyes were dull and somewhat vacant. ‘It’ll hurt soon, but I’ll get through the pain.’ Steve rubbed his hands with some massage oil almost spitefully, thinking, _You’ll be surprised how wrong you are_.

“At the start it may be not very pleasant,” he admitted and a bit gingerly put his hands on the warm muscular back. “But you’re going to feel better soon. Tell me where to push harder.”

So he started. He moved his hands, rubbing, stroking and loosening the tense muscles – at first in a spiral, feeling warm flesh under his palms and pushing the tips of his splayed fingers hard into it. Then – from the top down, from the shoulders to the feet and back. The Solder froze under his hands, seemingly forgetting how to breathe. Steve loosened the man’s painfully tense muscles, making his skin crawl and his body shiver shallowly.    
The Solder didn’t say anything. Steve understood it himself, when the Solder flinched and pushed back into his palm, seeking contact and catching an escaping touch. Steve obediently returned to the spot under the metal shoulder blade and felt a response. But he still paid more attention to the real arm because now it took all the pressure. He rubbed the feet, the shins and the thighs almost up to the buttocks. Almost. Steve considered such a touch too intimate. Besides, he didn’t want the Soldier to tense up anymore than was necessary. It wasn’t a good idea.  
“Well? Howya doing?”

After the massage the Soldier looked sleepy and drowsy, and for some reason Steve wanted to stroke his head and muss his hair.

“Thank you,” the Soldier said quietly.

Steve didn’t get it immediately…

But when he did, he stared at the Soldier, eyes wide open, and froze still with a towel in his hands. It wasn’t a mechanical reply for a service, like those ones waitresses in cafes heard every day. The Soldier felt gratitude and wanted to express it. He could feel gratitude. He could feel…

Steve approached and traced a signal sign across his forehead, because he just couldn’t come up with something else to deal with his enthusiasm. And he caught the response immediately.

The Soldier curved his lips slightly, flashed one of his fast rare smiles and Steve felt traitorous butterflies in his stomach. It was worth living for and rolling that unwieldy stone of Sisyphus.  


*  
It had been raining day and night; for that reason they couldn’t leave the facility. Steve had already drawn that conclusion for himself so before another training he asked the Solder to sit on the chair and, not without some problems, tied the hair on the back of his head in a ponytail. He chuckled, contemplating the results. With his hair like this, the Soldier – Bucky – looked funny and utterly cute. Some parts of his hair were still too short to get into a ponytail, the locks bristling behind his ears, and Steve thought about the time when it’d grow long enough. The time when Bucky would tie it in the ponytail on his own. With both his hands.

They trained in the sports hall, trying contact fighting anew. It seemed to Steve the Soldier missed the outside. And then, in response to the instruction ‘You can do whatever you want’ on the third day of rain the Soldier asked, “Stay”.

Steve was shocked. Then he smiled widely.   
“Bored?” he asked, feeling as if he was lighting up with success. “Should I keep you company?”

The Soldier nodded and hung his head, embarrassed either by Steve’s reaction or his own request. Or maybe he wasn’t embarrassed and it was just Steve’s imagination. Anyway, the Soldier moved his left shoulder as if the request made him feel awkward, but he looked at Steve somewhat defiantly, like he was saying: it was you who asked me to ask.

His hair was still in a ponytail, a bit loose after the training. And gave Steve an idea. He turned on the music so that they didn’t have to sit in silence and took a blank sheet of paper and a pencil. He asked the Soldier to stay still and the man froze on the red cover cross-legged. Steve sketched his figure with confident strokes while Scorpion’s _Wind of Change_ sounded from the speakers.

He thought then it was almost symbolic. And that they should diversify their shared leisure time. It must’ve not been his last ask for Steve to stay. Steve gave the finished drawing to the Soldier. The man looked at it for a long time and then put it on the pile of magazines, on top, so that he was able to see it from the bed.

‘Stay’.

Deep down Steve had waited for this request. It was written down in his notebook and underlined twice.  
*  
  
Next time Steve brought the chess set.

He explained to the Soldier that it was for analytical and strategic thinking training, for the ability to quickly navigate the situation according to the present resources. An exercise in military strategy, tactics and maneuvers.

Since that day it went on. They spent the whole three hours together according to the schedule: ‘Training – meal – chess’. The first time, Steve explained the chess pieces and their moves. The second, he asked about the pieces and rules, and the Soldier answered easily from his memory. He shared factual information without any effort, as if sight-reading.  

The third time they needed no theory. They just played. Faster and faster. They stared at the board equally intently, looking forward to the opponent’s move, because the bundle of possibilities in their heads was already rushing the game, so they managed to end it in a dozen different ways even before the first piece was captured. They were supersoldiers and they got lost in the game. It was pure analytics and it was captivating.

In the beginning Steve had thought about card games, hoping to drive the Soldier into a competitive mood. But for most games the man needed two arms, so Steve had chosen chess. Besides, it was easier to explain.

Steve didn’t admit even to himself how happy he was to be accepted in that last hour.  
*  


Every time Steve uses the same cologne, the same shampoo to wash Bucky’s hair and the same massage oil. In his opinion it’s important; he thinks the smells associated with pleasant feelings will help the Soldier recognize him. One more mark, one more identifying label. ‘You remind me of something good.’

Steve desperately wants it to continue.

He hardly notices how he looks forward to this time every day. How he lives in this time, suffering from agonizing waiting for their next meeting. After they begin to spend the third hour together, the Soldier starts responding with the signal immediately after Steve touches his forehead. He returns the sign without waiting for any orders.

“Do you know who I am?”

“You’re Steve,” the Soldier answers.

He neither calls Steve his handler nor says ‘You work with me’ any more. Steve isn’t sure if it’s good or bad in this situation, but he decides it’s all for the best. ‘At ease’ and the sign remain unchanged. The first is to confuse the program. The second immediately focuses the Soldier’s attention on him.

Steve has only one explanation. Now it all is in ‘Significant’. The Soldier remembers his schedule and knows exactly what’s happening to him. He’s already learned the rules of the game.

   


*   
The string of days was interrupted by the call from Sam. They telephoned each other from time to time, but lately Steve was a bit afraid of such calls, because he thought he couldn’t go anywhere unless it was totally necessary ‘til he finished the ‘lullaby’. That time everything was okay – Sam just called to find out if Cap was still alive because it turned out he hadn’t contacted anyone for almost two months.

Sam told him all kinds of criminal rag-tags encouraged by the rift had had to realize really fast that the Avengers - even being split - had remained effective. Besides, Stark healed his emotional wounds through good old ass-kicking, taking his frustration out on bad guys too many of which always fell to his lot. Thus, there weren’t any notable cases. Captain America could safely take some time off and lay low.

In his turn, Steve told him about his work and the conversation gradually transformed into a confession about Bucky’s cryochamber. About the arm, Stark, guilt, the Soldier.

“Did he ever tell you why he hadn’t admitted he remembered you?”

Steve smiled.

“Yeah, he thought it would be better like this. I can understand him, he was all nerves. The explosion in Vienna…”

Sam snickered with a strange expression.

“Well, dunno, pal. Barnes’s a piece of work, but you didn’t come over for a tea. You know, if I had the German Special Forces on my roof and a dude in Captain America’s suit in front of me who required my status deciding if he should help me with this shit or not, the last thing I’d do would be pretending confusion.”

“Sam, but they pinned the terrorist attack on him…”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. It doesn’t matter if he remembers everything or only some things about you. You came as an ally and he kinda stated right to your face he had no idea who you were.”

“That’s just the way Bucky is,” Steve insisted. “He doesn’t accept any help in a difficult situation.”

“Well, you know better.”

Sam gave up and changed the subject to the other escapees.

And Steve started thinking after that conversation.  
*   
  
That thought stuck in his head like a splinter.

‘You’re Steve. I read about you in a museum.’

He’d lied. Bucky had lied to him, deliberately. Even more than that. He’d covered himself with the Winter Soldier. Why? It would have been a different matter if Steve had just found him, stopped by his house and Bucky had had time to look and listen closely, realize everything was okay. But when the German Special Forces were on the roof…

Sam was right, that didn’t explain everything.

Covering oneself with the Winter Soldier…

Everything else was true. Steve didn’t doubt the reasons why Bucky hadn’t asked for help and hadn’t contacted him. That explained everything except this one detail. Lie. Plus, instantaneous and impromptu one. As if he’d been caught in the act and now was trying to deny everything. But… Why would he deny everything?

‘If I’d had to fight with you…’

Had he done something like this before…?

The cufflinks.

That thought hit him hard, and Steve, stunned, lay still for some time. This had happened before. Exactly. That was Bucky… His pal Bucky from Brooklyn… who’d already run from him like that at one time.

The cufflinks.

It couldn’t be that…

Oh no, Buck, please. Not again.  
*  
  
He didn’t read the code watching Bucky wake up. Now it was Bucky. When the man rolled his head over the pad, narrowing his eyes tight, Steve approached and unfastened the straps. Bucky opened his eyes, blinked and shook his head, shaking off drowsiness.

“Steve?”

He sounded husky. Steve was once again surprised how different their voices were. Bucky’s voice was more high pitched, filled with intonations, complex overtones and emotions – warmth, confusion, surprise…

“We need to talk.”  
From the sound of it, Bucky understood his words in his own way. He entered the room and sank into the chair slowly as if he were made of wood, never taking his intense stare off Steve. In his eyes there was the panic of a person who was desperately trying to remember what they’d done. Actually, the question wasn’t what exactly it was – Steve knew everything anywhere. The question was what of that ‘done’ Steve found out only now.

Bucky looked at him, scared, for a long time, then he broke down.

“What did I do?”

“That’s what I want to know,” Steve said with a bitter sigh.

He towered over Bucky, his arms folded across his chest. His stare was hard and sad.

“What did you do?”

Bucky frowned in confusion.

“But you know it. Everything. Even better than me…”

“It’s not the Soldier I’m asking about. It’s you.”  
Silence. Thick and heavy.

“You know, I believed you. It sounded very convincing. I accepted your reasons because they explained almost everything. Except the lie. You didn’t say you remembered me…”

“I’ve already explained…” Bucky started, but Steve interrupted him.

“You lied to me. If it wasn’t for the special forces, it’d be right, but I came as an ally and you didn’t want to cooperate.”

Bucky kept silent, his eyes to the floor. Harshly and tensely.

“You know, I’ve been thinking… turning it every way. After all these years and events we’re not the same anymore. You could’ve had reasons. But if you’re still the Bucky I remember there’s the only reason you could hide behind memory loss. The cufflinks, Buck.”

Bucky jerked his head up.

“You remember it?”

“I remember,” Bucky admitted quietly and looked down again. “I had a job interview. The very first one. I was so nervous my knees trembled. I put on my best suit. You gave me your dad’s cufflinks, the silver ones, to make a better impression and for good luck… I didn’t get that job.”

“Remember what happened after?”

“I was upset. Went for a walk with Helen Devenport and her sister. And than I lost one cufflink. In the park. I think, in the park.”

“And as far as I remember for over a week…”

“I hoped to find it. I searched through the whole place several times…”

“And in the end you confessed only when I caught you near the house and made you explain why you didn’t want anything to do with me anymore. I thought you resented me, I thought I did something wrong…”

“Steve…”

“You don’t have to lie to me again, Buck. You hadn’t hid from HYDRA for those two years. For the same reason you pretended to not remember me. I want to know the reason. What happened? What did you do?”

Bucky was silent for a long time, swallowing heavily as if his throat contracted.

“I killed three people,” he said tunelessly. “Not the Winter Soldier. My own self.”

The room got quiet. Steve wasn’t surprised. Deep down he’d waited for something like this. Suddenly Bucky started to laugh, softly and bitterly. This laughter gave Steve the creeps. Bucky was laughing joylessly and man, it looked so much like approaching hysterics that Steve got a bit scared.

“I’m scum, Steve,” Bucky laughed. “And a coward. I couldn’t even kill myself… They… I killed…”

The wide hand smashed in his lips, slapping him in the mouth and interrupting the horrible confession.  
“I don’t want to know details,” Steve chocked out thickly. “Tell me only one thing. Was it necessary?”

A nod. A very weak one. But it was confirmation and Steve accepted it.

“Good. It’s enough for me.”

Silence fell on them like a heavy blanket and they were crushed under it.

And then Steve felt wetness sliding under his palm. On both sides. Bucky shivered violently in the first clenching crying spasm and Steve’s stomach cramped. He removed his hand and made a step closer. He got on his knees in front of the chair and his hands darted to the man’s shaking shoulders as if of their own volition. Bucky groaned grievously, clung to him and pressed his forehead to Steve’s shoulder. And then it came bursting out of his throat, that long bone-chilling howl, full of terror, pain and guilt. The Winter Soldier, blood, inferiority, the twenty first century, loneliness, constant fear of being caught, people in white coats, wipes, shooting could be heard in it…  
And victims, victims, victims…

Steve didn’t know how to comfort him. He didn’t even know if he should try. Bucky had never wept like this in his presence – uncontrollably, crying himself hoarse, shaking all over as if convulsing. How long he’d been hiding it inside…

Steve stroked his head and his broad back helplessly. The words were also unhelpful now. That none of that was Bucky’s fault. Than he was Steve’s only family. That Steve would never give up on him. That they’d definitely manage. All the scary things were over now, behind them. It was time to move on.

The words were unhelpful, but Steve kept talking, feeling the need to say something, anything.

It was unlikely Bucky could hear him. His ears must’ve been filled with the pounding of blood and his own screams. But intonation was even more important than words. Steve continued talking and soothing, Bucky’s muscles under his palms were spasming, but the howl had stopped. Now Bucky was just crying. Bitterly, biting the T-shirt over Steve’s shoulder. Choking and shaking violently as if everything that had happened to him finally broke through and got out with tears.

But even this wasn’t the most important thing. The barrier broke down.

And now, in a distant African country, Brooklyn once again became a reality; the thirties and the forties were rising up from the ashes as if both of them managed to reach the past. Steve felt a bit dizzy, they were friends again, here and now, and Bucky was hugging him tightly with his hand, reluctant to let him go.

And Steve was stroking his friend’s shivering shoulders, kissing the top of his head and thinking, _My poor silly wolf_ …  
*   


“Better?”

Steve felt rather than saw the nod. Bucky, done with weeping and crying, was sitting still now, curled up comfortably in the crook of Steve’s arm with his head pressed to Steve’s neck. Steve gave up, moved aside and looked into Bucky’s face. Bucky’s eyes under the swollen red eyelids were cloudy, but in a very different way from the Soldier’s. Lost. Depleted.

“That cufflink… ‘fraid of telling you…”

“You’re an idiot, Buck. Was an idiot then, too.” Steve almost casually tucked his friend’s hair behind his ear and only then remembered that he’d done it only with the Soldier. “It was a pity of course, but you could’ve figured it out yourself that I’d been much more afraid of losing you than cufflinks. Dumb-ass.”

“They were unarmed.”  
Steve held his breath. His hand froze in Bucky’s hair.

“Were they enemies?” he asked quietly.

“HYDRA’s technicians,” Bucky answered, looking into the distance. He curved his lips, but the smile failed. His lips trembled. “They repaired my arm and maintained the memory wiping machine. They said Pierce was killed. There were no operatives there and they weren’t armed. Weren’t a threat. Even the Soldier wouldn’t… I wasn’t going to… But they wore white coats and suddenly it made me so furious… One of them reached for a radio set… or I just thought so, I dunno… god, there was so much blood… Later I had to wash someone’s brain matter out of my arm. There was hair on it, Steve! Hair!” His voice rose to a shriek, but he quickly came to his senses, made a deep breath and chuckled joylessly. “Can you see it now, dummy? The Soldier and I… The difference between us is not so big.”

“Stop this nonsense. I know you and I know him. You’re both victims.”

“What a thing to say…” Bucky sighed.

And now Steve believed it for sure… Yes, that was Bucky. His broken, desperate and deadly tired friend, fallen from the train in 1944. The Bucky he knew, who couldn’t remain the same after everything that had happened to him. Only Bucky was able to beat himself up about killing three unarmed persons after so many assignments as the Winter Soldier. Even if they were HYDRA agents and he wasn’t entirely honest. It wasn’t about them being unarmed. The point was what exactly Bucky had done with them. Bucky was horrified by his own actions and Steve could understand him.

It was the echo of the Soldier, too. The same amock Steve saw in the Soldier when the man lost control. Bucky was a victim of violence. He could talk about it, even make jokes about it, but realization that your mind, your personality had been forcibly controlled by someone… It might be even worse than physical abuse. You could abstract yourself from violence to your body, but where could you escape from your own head?

…And the Winter Soldier was the fruit of this violence. A war child. Bucky’s child with HYDRA. Or HYDRA’s child with Bucky? That strange thought stabbed Steve’s heart. The Soldier knew nothing but violence, the one he’d done and the one that had been done to him. He did have a vague idea of everything else, but his nature considered it as irrelevant. Steve had been trying to hack the program with himself, write himself into it via non-violent actions. He hadn’t been sure kindness and care would be stronger than pain and power of the order…

But suddenly it didn’t matter anymore.

It wasn’t in vain. Whatever the end would be, it wasn’t in vain. Now Steve didn’t regret at all that he’d started it. Because he’d already grown attached to that child. Because the Winter Soldier smiled at him. And that rare smile was worth more to him than all the well executed commands and memorized phrases. Now Steve was sure. And he calmed down strangely, accepting that thought.

“I’ll save you both,” he whispered into Bucky’s hair and drew him closer. “You and him.”

Bucky chuckled somewhat not well at these words. Bitterly. He moved aside and got up.

“Send me back, Steve. I’ve had enough commotion for today. Wanna rest.”

“Hey.” Steve caught his wrist. “I’m glad you told me. I’m glad you feel better.”  
Bucky nodded. He looked distracted, as if he hadn’t completely recovered after his meltdown.

While Steve was fastening him in, their eyes met. Steve reached out and gave Bucky’s real shoulder a friendly pat. He smiled sadly and got the same tired, but warm smile in return.

 _He’s better indeed_ , Steve thought, looking at the tear tracks appearing on Bucky’s cheeks in an icy whirl.  
*  
  
“At ease, Солдат.”

Steve had already noticed it earlier – Bucky’s behavior had an impact on the Soldier’s own. The next day after Bucky’s breakdown the Soldier seemed to meet Steve more kindly. He looked differently. He answered more actively, ‘You’re Steve’. As if he kept the echo of Bucky’s emotions. Steve thought it was a good sign and perhaps, he should wake Bucky more often. Bucky would grumble of course, but if Steve convinced him they needed it for the therapy… He’d cave in. After all, he was also interested in Steve’s success.

The whole day was somewhat strange. The Soldier looked at his face all the time.

“What should I do?”

“Whatever you want.”

Steve thought the man would ask him to stay as he’d done recently and he was thinking about chess, but then the Soldier stepped closer and traced the signal sign on Steve’s forehead, but he did it more slowly and his fingers paused on Steve’s temple.

“Just if you want to poke my eye out, let me know beforehand.”

Steve smiled, surprised by such a turn of events and its novelty. He’d been sure for a long time now that all the new things in that room were for the best.

He was still smiling when the Soldier’s mouth touched his dryly.

His humor was gone at once. Steve froze, stunned, as if someone had knocked all air out of his lungs. For a long second both of them stood still, their lips connected. Then the Soldier stepped back.  
“Why did you do this?” Steve asked in a strained voice.

He was desperately fighting with heavy shock. Bewilderment stole his breath, his heart was thrumming like a hammer.

“Whatever I want,” the Soldier reminded.

He was scrutinizing Steve’s face intensely as if waiting for a hit.

“You want it?”

A barely visible nod. Steve stepped closer.

“Who am I?” he asked quietly.

He almost lost his voice. Blood was pounding in his ears.

“You’re Steve,” answered the Soldier similarly quietly, looking into his eyes.

Only then Steve leaned real close and reduced the distance between them to nothing.

*   


An hour later, lying on the bed in the observation room, Steve replayed that episode in his mind again and again.

Everything for the best, eh?

He’d kissed the Soldier on the lips. Bucky’s lips. He’d done it. He’d done it and caught a movement in response. They’d kissed each other lightly, softly, carefully. Tasting each other. They’d just rubbed skin against skin, with their tongues behind their teeth.

No funny business. What could be more innocent?

But that touch alone had made him tremble so badly he couldn’t stop it now.

Steve exhaled loudly, squeezing his eyes tightly. They’d kissed each other. They’d kissed, dammit! The Soldier’s lips had been soft. Not like Sharon Carter’s though. It’d lasted not long. The Soldier had stood still, frozen; his right arm had hung along his body, he hadn’t tried to hug Steve or deepen into the kiss. He’d only closed his eyes and returned the touches, but it’d already been so much that Steve had found breathing difficult.    
When their lips had parted, they’d frozen, still staying side by side.

“I’m unstable,” the Soldier had said very quietly, his head down.

“Then it’s time to sleep,” Steve had managed.

He’d had no idea what he should do and say. His brain had been a mess, he’d thought he could hear the Soldier’s heart pounding.

The man had nodded obediently. It’d been the time.

Steve rolled onto his back, licked and slightly bit his lower lip to collect Bucky’s taste from it with his teeth. His tongue felt like a candy. His pulse was beating in it. Those lips were familiar. But Jesus, how long ago it’d happened.

Tomorrow it would be clear if it’d been a passing fit or not. Tomorrow. Already tomorrow…

Steve caught himself constantly licking and biting his lips, picturing how he kissed the other’s.  
*   


“At ease, Солдат.”

He didn’t look around the way he always did. He just stared and didn’t blink.

“Do you remember the routine? Go warm up, wash yourself and I’m waiting for you for breakfast.”

The Soldier didn’t stir a foot. And when the other’s hand reached for his head, he stepped back and didn’t let touch him. He kept frowning so intensely it seemed the air crackled with static noise.

“What’s wrong?”

“You’re not Steve.” The Soldier’s voice was like cold steel. “Only Steve works with me.”

T’Challa shook his head. Steve watched them from the observation room, with his elbows on the tabletop and his hands locked. He was very nervous and the unpredictability of that scene worried him. T’Challa had requested the check all of a sudden, they’d even had an argument. His Majesty thought a human factor played a minor role in Steve’s formula. Unlike Steve, T’Challa believed in hypnosis and was very skeptical about Steve’s methods. ‘At ease’ and the code sign had been used largely at Steve’s insistence although last thing he needed was checks and strangers.

“Now you’re under my authority. Confirm it.”  

“You’re not Steve,” the Soldier repeated stubbornly.

He was looking down and frowning deeply as if trying to remember something.

“You’re under my authority! Confirm,” the Panther ordered.

The Soldier looked up at him. A long pause.

And finally…

“Destabilization message,” he growled and, engulfed by amock, moved toward T’Challa, clenching his right hand into a fist.

The Soldier already took a swing when Steve rushed into a room, caught him around the waist and dragged him back. He wasn’t afraid for the Soldier, now the Panther was stronger anyway, but in that state the Soldier fought like crazy and Steve wanted to avoid serious injuries. Fortunately, the Soldier didn’t have time to attack him – he turned around and stopped short as if by order.

“It’s me, I’m here,” Steve said, holding him by the shoulders and looking into his cloudy gray eyes. “Who am I?”

“Steve.”

The whole Soldier’s body relaxed instantly. It seemed he even became lighter. Then he knitted his brow as if in pain or with that feeling when the answer was right on the tip of your tongue, but you couldn’t grasp it. Or as if contradictory feelings were tearing him apart. The order and… something else.

“Steve, I’m unstable,” the Soldier warned in a low serious voice, looking right into Steve’s eyes.

Steve’s stomach lurched when he remembered under what circumstances the man had said the same words yesterday.

“Then it’s time to sleep.”

The Soldier nodded and went to the cryochamber, on his own, without further words or actions.

He never shot another look at T’Challa. Steve caught the Panther looking at him over the Soldier’s shoulder. His Majesty was grinning approvingly.  
*  
  
The next day went like every day before.

Steve already knew if something had changed fundamentally, if it’d reflected and left an imprint inside, the Soldier would repeat it. But after the words ‘Whatever you want’ the Soldier just nodded. Didn’t ask Steve to stay. He spent all his allotted time sitting on the floor and throwing a ball against the wall. Without music. Steve didn’t know how exactly he should feel about it, but discontent rolled inside. As if he wanted the Soldier to repeat the kiss. As if he waited for it.

An hour later Steve said it was time to sleep and his voice sounded somewhat washed out.

The Soldier nodded. He started for the cryochamber, but reluctantly and stiffly.

And then he stopped in front of it. For the first time.

Steve approached to ask him what was wrong and even touched his metal shoulder…

The experiment failed. It failed when they exchanged short glances, rushed towards each other simultaneously and their starving lips melted together. It failed when the Soldier’s tongue, swift and wet, swiped between Steve’s lips, making them ache and pulsate ecstatically. It failed when Steve carefully licked the Soldier’s mouth in return and the Soldier caught his move, responded…  
And then they drowned.

They kissed so hard as if they wanted to drink each other alive, intertwining their tongues hungrily and fighting. Steve forgot he’d promised himself not to take the initiative. His arms, as if on their own accord, got full of a strong warm body, wrapped it up like vines and drew closer. The heart in that body boomed as loudly as his own as Steve drank all its heat. The Soldier held onto his neck tightly. Steve ran his hand across his back while his other hand lay on the man’s lower back, pulling the Soldier closer and closer, and Steve’s body slowly filled with healthy pleasant heaviness, with hungry languor, the clothes started to detain him and suddenly he wanted really badly to get horizontal – fall and drag with him…

Steve got scared of that impulse. He drew back. Looked into the wetly glistening eyes. Then gave up, pulled in the Soldier again, kissing him on the lips, long forgotten Bucky’s lips, and they got lost for a few long minutes. The Soldier responded so rampantly, there were so much unrestrained fury and passion in that impulse, so many signs of unruly blatant defiance that Steve thought in horror, _It’s Bucky!_

But when he drew back again, he immediately realized he was wrong. The other man’s eyes were still cloudy, it was just that Steve had never seen such an expression in them before.

“It’s time to sleep,” he whispered, struggling with overpowering desire to kiss him again, to kiss him senseless.

He needed to stop it. For the first time in his life unquenched naked desire to kiss made him dizzy and shivering. The Soldier licked his lips quickly and nodded.

He licked his lips! Licked his lips, oh, damn him…

When Steve was fastening the Soldier to the cryochamber base, the man’s eyes didn’t leave him. Steve tried to stifle two opposite urges – to unstrap him right now and to ask him to avert his eyes. His hands trembled traitorously, the clamps couldn’t get into slots. Steve couldn’t bear it. He finished fastening, took the Soldier’s face in his hands, stroked the hot cheeks with his thumbs and then kissed him on the mouth several times, briefly and hard.

“See you tomorrow,” he whispered and stepped back.

The Soldier was looking into his eyes. As if he understood everything. He was looking when the glass rose, looking when the frosty jets started, and then his gray eyes became glassy, still wide open.

Only then Steve allowed himself to let out a deep shaky breath. He hadn’t been able to do it before. He’d been afraid to lose it and smash the damned chamber to pieces not to leave him like that…

His mouth seemed to be on fire. He desperately wanted to get back that elastic sliding of the Soldier’s tongue against his own. And he’d really thought he and Sharon had had chemistry then…

He couldn’t even dream of it.

…He came to his senses in the shower, stroking himself frenziedly and thinking about that pink tongue between the lips. The hot cheeks under his fingers. And those eyes… The eyes full of warmth, happiness and quiet deep seated sadness.

You’d looked in the wrong direction, Rogers… Those eyes, they’d been full of love. Love.  
An orgasm twisted him, squeezed him in a fist and hit from inside, splashing on the floor and the wall…

After that Steve breathed loudly for a long time, swaying on his weak legs.

He thought, _Well, a wolf trainer, are you happy now?_ And then he suddenly realized it, sharp and clear.

Yes, happy. Madly so.

*  


_The thumb of circumstance had done its work only too well. By it he had been formed and hardened into the Fighting Wolf, fierce and implacable, unloving and unlovable. To accomplish the change was like a reflux of being._

_Yet again, in this new orientation, it was the thumb of circumstance that pressed and prodded him, softening that which had become hard and remoulding it into fairer form. Weedon Scott was in truth this thumb. He had gone to the roots of White Fang’s nature, and with kindness touched to life potencies that had languished and well-nigh perished. One such potency was love. It took the place of like, which latter had been the highest feeling that thrilled him in his intercourse with the gods._


	8. STAGE FOUR (A)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for explicit sexual content in this chapter!

STAGE FOUR

 

Steve lay in the bed and rolled his tongue in his mouth. Curled it, brushed it against his teeth, stroked his palate. Something twitched and throbbed with interest in his crotch, but the sensations weren’t exactly the same.

For a very long time nobody kissed him like this… like Bucky.

Even Bucky had only kissed him … twice? Three times? No. Back in Brooklyn he’d definitely done it twice during the whole… night? No. It hadn’t lasted for long, an hour at most, maybe less. Bucky had rented an attic, a tiny drafty loft. Steve had been eighteen and he’d already become an orphan. Bucky had been nineteen and he’d found a job, his wage had been enough to get his own place and live alone, even help his family. Bucky had invited him to the house-warming; in those days he’d constantly inflicted his company on Steve because he’d thought it’d been wrong to leave him alone with the grief of loss.

That bourbon had been horrible. They’d had a long, hot talk about something…

They’d got drunk.  

…the bed had been sagging and squeaky… That was why everything had happened on the floor where they’d piled the mattresses. It’d been the only thing on which Steve, drunk and painfully horny, had managed to insist. Everything was fragmented and jumpy in his memory. They’d sat and drunk bitter whisky which had burnt his throat and stomach. The smell of it alone had made Steve feel sick, the room had started to sway, but it’d been warm and kind of nice in his chest, and he’d kept slurring his words, stubbornly proving something to Bucky… something very very important…

In the following frames of his memory they’d already been kissing. His memory didn’t offer the knowledge who’d been the first to kiss the other, but he’d drunkenly pecked at his friend’s lips, feeling that he’d wanted, wanted badly, that it’d been exciting and utterly necessary. That kiss hadn’t been the first one and it’d been important because he’d desperately wanted to return that sensation and kiss, he’d wanted it painfully, excruciatingly, as if with the other’s lips he’d tried to quench the fire inside. In that frame of memory he’d tried to kiss and missed, almost crying, and his wet lips had kept slipping off. Until Bucky had taken his face in his hands and kissed him, just right. It’d been… thrilling.

The rest of the frames were mixed, overlapped…

Both of them had been on edge. Bucky had stripped him, kissing his neck. Bucky had touched him through his clothes, and asking for some reason if Steve had done it to himself. Steve hadn’t understood right off what Bucky was talking about, he’d mellowed with his friend’s hand between his legs, and when he’d understood he’d lied, said yes, he had. It hadn’t been true, but he’d been too ashamed to tell Bucky about it, although in reality he hadn’t abused himself, thinking it’d been humiliating and dirty, unworthy of a Christian…

He’d started doing it later. Regularly. Hopelessly trying to revive those sensations.

Right. It all had started with kissing. And then, after everything had been over, Bucky had pulled him in for a long slow kiss for the second time. Afterwards they’d lain in bed and kissed. Bucky had kissed his slack mouth lazily and gratefully, drowsy with fatigue, letting Steve feel his happiness.

And Steve… He’d been drunk and it’d been the first time he’d kissed someone like that, with tongue, so he’d just given in and melted into the kiss. It’d been more than his first such kiss… Bucky had been the first person with whom he’d had a relationship. And the only man with whom he’d had a relationship. If you could call it like that – an hour of drunken awkward teenage sex which left in his memory only a mix of drawing pain, shameful opening and tickly sliding, which had sent waves of shallow uncontrolled shivering along his legs. And how big and hot Bucky’s palms had been…

It was a lie. He remembered. He remembered everything.   
As soon as he reached for the memory, it unfolded in his mind. It’d been dark, cold, scary and embarrassing. And intimately exciting. They’d lain back to stomach like spoons. Bucky had clung to his back, breathed into his neck, held his thigh with one hand, the other tucked under Steve’s side. It’d been uncomfortable, but Steve wouldn’t ever have admitted it. Because Bucky, big and warm, had cuddled him and pushed into him there, from behind, wide and thick. Where Steve had felt his hot greedy fingers before that. Steve had hid his face, squeezed his eyes shut, trying not to lose himself too much in what Bucky had been doing to him and in the aching drawing sensation inside. He’d felt Bucky’s heaviness when he’d pressed more of his weight on him, trying to force himself in deeper. And at first it had hurt, hurt a lot, but in the end it’d started to feel good. Painfully good.

There’d been a lot of fear. And curiosity. And trust. Yeah, perhaps… most of it had been trust. Because even being drunk, in the cold darkness, feeling a dull pain in such a shameful place, Steve had known Bucky wouldn’t hurt him. This knowledge had been deep and it’d let him do it without hesitation.

And do whatever it’d taken, ‘til the end.

He could remember the pleasure in him had been growing, swelling, getting stronger, overfilling him; Steve hadn’t noticed he’d cried out in rhythm with the thrusts, fearing it could tear him apart. There’d been too much pleasure and he’d needed to let it out, but he hadn’t known how and he could no longer hold it in…

Steve had screamed with his release, shrilly and harshly, yelling out his intolerable joy.

All the next times he’d always gone through that sweet moment quietly, allowing himself only a groan.

He remembered.

He remembered it. After so many years. Even a bitter aftertaste of bourbon in his mouth – and in Bucky’s mouth, too. He remembered the wavy darkness before his eyes, filled with hot double breathing and scary intoxicating understanding that they’d been doing it for real. The hot groggy whisper, full of soft words and obscenities, and Bucky who’d bitten his neck and tightly filled him from behind – all that had made tickling heat flow to his lower stomach. Although at the beginning the sensations hadn’t been very pleasant, the atmosphere, the darkness, Bucky’s hands and realization under the mist of alcohol: ‘I’m doing it, I’m doing it with Bucky! And he’s doing it with me…’ It’d aroused him so much that he’d whimpered and groaned out his exhausting desire. With his sweaty palm he’d covered Bucky’s hand which had slid from his hip to the spot between his steaming hot legs. That hand had caressed him, squeezed him and moved, and Steve had hastened its rhythm with his own hand, openly demonstrating how good he’d felt. The waves of bliss had rocked him and he’d wanted so badly to burst with pleasure right in Bucky’s hands, fly to pieces, disappear…    
And by all means not to survive so that for the grace of god he wouldn’t have to look into Bucky’s eyes.   
The morning was awfully awkward. Steve had wanted to die of embarrassment. Nothing had seemed to help put everything back the way it’d been before, not even a shared hangover headache, but Bucky had saved him there. They’d sat side by side on the bed, not looking at each other. Steve had wrapped up with a bed sheet, head to toe, and trembled with cold and shock, and Bucky, almost dressed, with his bare torso covered in goose bumps, had said that it’d been an accident, everything could’ve happened under the effect of booze and darkness. That it was a life experience. That their friendship would always be more important.

But the worst part had been that he’d taken the fall.

He’d made excuses. He’d begged pardon. Steve remembered Bucky had touched his shoulder gingerly and timidly, and Steve had risked looking up at him. Bucky had been very handsome at that moment. Handsome and sad. And Steve had only nodded like a damned coward, utterly hollow, trying not to show that those words had fell on him like stones. They’d been right. Saving him. It’d been impossible to resolve it any other way.

“We were drunk. We made a mistake, but we aren’t gonna let it destroy our friendship.”

Right. But shame had squeezed his throat so tightly he’d wanted to die. Badly. Because at that moment it’d seemed easier to stab himself in the stomach with a kitchen knife than to admit how good he’d felt.

They’d decided it would be better like that. Steve had pretended he’d forgiven Bucky though there’d been nothing to forgive. Three days later Bucky had fallen into a romantic relationship with another girl. He’d quickly returned to normal.  

And Steve… For a couple of days Steve had sat down with some difficulty, his cheeks getting pink with memories, while quiet sadness had oppressed him. Just as the fact he could remember some of the words Bucky had feverishly whispered.

‘Steve, just like this, baby, like this… ah, damn, how tight you’re…relax a bit, pal, Steve, I want you to feel good so much … D’you want me? Did you think about me like this, eh? You like it? I do feel how badly you want me here, I want you, too, can you feel it? You’re drivin’ me crazy… I adore you, Steve… I love you, baby…’

Bucky didn’t remember. Or he’d said he hadn’t remembered the gibberish he’d thrown. He’d been drunk. Besides, he must’ve whispered something like that to every girl he’d had in his bed. What could you expect from him?

Steve did remember. It’d been his first time after all. You’re supposed to remember things like that.  

Bucky was his first. Perhaps that’s why for a long time afterwards his body had kept responding to Bucky. It, his body, had loved Bucky passionately. Wanted him, waited to have him again. And Steve couldn’t convince it, his peccant body, that they couldn’t love Bucky anymore, that it had been wrong. He’d felt abandoned and it hadn’t mattered how many times he’d tried to make himself believe that nothing had happened, the feeling of abandonment and loss had died away only a year after they’d decided for their own good that it’d been just a fascinating experience. Booze and darkness.

It’d been resolved the right way. He’d really made himself believe it. Or so he’d thought.

He’d calmed down eventually. Though things with women had still been awkward, before the serum at least. And after… There’d been a lot of everything. Women had fought, attempted suicide and cried because of him. Without knowing it, he’d charmed and broken hearts, become the cause of scandals and fights, and one time he’d been drawn into a love triangle with two pretty cheer team girls… However, in reality everything had turned out to be not nearly so intriguing as it’d looked. As for sexual experience in the modern world… Steve didn’t want to bring it up.

They hadn’t talked about it again. It all would’ve disappeared and vanished on that cold New York morning.   
If it hadn’t been for one more kiss.

A sudden and unexpected one. Austria, autumn, the HYDRA base. As soon as they’d gotten out of the fire, Bucky had caught his hand and – silently, with his face serious and concentrated – sucked on his lips. To do so, he’d had to rise up on his tiptoes and reach up. Steve had been inexcusably taller than him now. Steve had caught Bucky and put his hand on his friend’s back – Bucky had still been quite unsteady on his feet. Smoke had irritated their eyes and nostrils, the shield had been in the way, the damned labs had exploded… They’d kissed each other. Passionately and hungrily. Until they’d heard shouting in the distance.  

“Buck, it’s…” he’d started, but Bucky had just laughed.

“Don’t worry, Captain America. I’ll take it to my grave.”

And he’d done just that, the rascal. Later he’d said jokingly he’d been under the influence. Steve hadn’t believed him, but he covered it up.

Bucky had never kissed him since.

They hadn’t talked about that kiss, either.

  
*  
Bucky had loved kissing. Worse, he’d known how to do it. Once (or twice) he’d done it with Steve, and Steve, relaxing into pleasant giddiness and a languid tickling in his whole body, had had to admit that Bucky had been talented. He hadn’t considered kissing as the way to divert attention or a concession in a girl’s favor. In Bucky’s worldview kissing had been a separate type of pleasure which could lead to another, equally exciting, continuation. But even without that kissing had just been to his liking.

Steve, who’d always thought kissing could be mastered by everyone who wanted it badly enough, had had to admit that it was a kind of art, and, like with drawing, experience came with practice.   
Now they kissed every day.

Steve never started it although his lips felt hot, tingly and aching the closer they got to the third hour. He was sure he couldn’t do it. Not like that. Only at the other’s wish, at his silent request. Only if the Soldier wanted it. Steve waited for a sign.

And he got it. Every day.   
After showering, sometimes even without touching the food, they froze, looking into each other’s eyes, and Steve understood everything before the Soldier took a step closer. Steve understood everything from only the shining of his eyes. The Soldier approached, his look dropping down to Steve’s mouth, and Steve swallowed hard and felt his lips ache, begging, demanding a touch. Something must have reflected on his face because the Soldier reached and touched him dryly, lightly pressing his soft mouth to the pink strip of Steve’s lips. Deadly and still, waiting for a response. And he got his response. Every day. Steve kissed him back and the Soldier’s lips on his mouth came to life, moved, and what happened next was always different. Every time its novelty surprised Steve – how was it going to happen…

They both waited for that third hour so that with its coming they could kiss to the point of exhaustion. Sometimes the Soldier sat on the table and Steve, lowering his head, caressed his inviting lips, greedy and insatiable. Sometimes their kissing was ravishing and ardent, and then Steve got the Soldier on the red cover, stroked his sensitive gums with his tongue and felt the other man shiver beneath him.

Twice the Soldier pushed him into the chair and straddled his lap. Steve went still under his touch because it was the Soldier’s turn to lead and do whatever he wanted. Steve only stroked his face, tucked his hair, which was constantly caught in his mouth, behind his ears and held the metal shoulder blade while the Soldier kissed, furiously stung, ravened upon him; while the Soldier thrust his tongue deeply and rhythmically, mimicking totally different, far more shameless things lower than the mouth.

But more often they just sat on the bed and kissed. Calmly, gently and sensually, breathing deep and eyes closed, completely absorbed in each other. With their fingers and tongues entwined. It seemed to Steve they could do it for the whole hour, though they’d never cracked this record. Not even an hour… Steve could do it all day long.

This intimacy clouded his mind, causing treacherous trembling and familiar resonant agitation, as if the tip of the Soldier’s tongue brushed against some delicate fork in Steve’s mouth and its vibrant sound resonated through his body to the bone…

The worst part was that excitement started filling Steve even when Bucky still slept in the cryochamber. Always all of a sudden and hard, as if thoughts about kissing the Soldier alone touched that damned fork. He daydreamed vague images, drowned in burning tenderness, which was evoked by any thought of the Soldier.

Steve wanted to caress him. Drown him in kisses, drive him to a frenzy…

They didn’t do anything else. Steve wasn’t sure, and was afraid of thinking, about what exactly he should do if something else appeared in the offing. It was Bucky after all. And he was unconscious. Steve could still allow kisses though they hadn’t been innocent ones for a while, but the thought of ‘something else’ scared him.    
Besides, it was exciting and that fact didn’t scare him any less.

Steve hadn’t seen Bucky since they started this. He felt ashamed. Among other things, because he had no idea what he should do with all this. But mainly because if Bucky forbade him from doing it…

He wasn’t able to think about it.

The day of procedures was coming.

  
*  
Steve was afraid of this day. He was afraid of the fact he’d looked forward to it. Was afraid of the languor that filled his body every time he thought about his friend’s naked body. The thoughts made his blood boil.

That was the most sensuous experience. The very first one. The most memorable one.

Even if it had happened in a past life, the body remembered it much better than the memory.

Steve didn’t know what he’d do if something… happened on that day. Because even then he knew that something would indeed happen. They responded to each other pretty explicitly even when they just kissed. Though Steve preferred to pretend he didn’t notice anything and just moved aside, not letting the Soldier’s arousal peak, still…

That day the Soldier was more reserved than usual. He didn’t shy away from touching and let Steve wash his hair, but his body wasn’t relaxed. The water was almost black like coffee; Steve intentionally made the solution more concentrated so that they could both feel not so awkward, and now they drowned in the smell of chandan and citrus zest.

But in spite of the dark water Steve could still see it. Even if it was only a shape, a heavy with blood, pressed to his stomach…

The Soldier grasped the bathtub ledge so hard his fingers turned white. He didn’t look at Steve.

“Hey.”

Steve touched his shoulder and got a wary tense look. He expected the Soldier to say, “I’m unstable,” but the man was silent. There was almost the old fear in his eyes. What was happening with him wasn’t right and if he let it happen, he should be punished.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m okay.”

He expressed just what Steve was thinking, but rigid stubbornness flashed in his answer, stealthy like a snake in the bushes. Which meant he wasn’t okay. Steve took a deep breath, trying to think of the best course of action to take.

After all, though it sounded flattering, it was he who caused that reaction.

“It’s okay. It happens. You can handle this,” Steve said softly, trying to hide the tremor in his voice. “I’ll leave you for a while. Call me when you’re done, okay?”

The movement was lightning-fast. The Soldier raised his hand and grabbed his t-shirt. He hung his head, frowning; his hair covered his face. His fingers held hard, but Steve could see if he wanted to get free, the Soldier wouldn’t try and stop him. Everything was bad. Everything was very bad because Steve _wanted_ the Soldier to hold him.

“What?” he exhaled.

His throat suddenly got very dry and he couldn’t breathe.   
“Do my wishes matter?” the Soldier asked dryly.

Too dryly to sound believable. Excitement started vibrating inside Steve like a snake coiling in his stomach. Steve sat down on the floor in front of the Soldier and tried to look into his face.

The Soldier sat, his head down, frozen in place, as if his whole body was waiting for an answer.

“What do you want?” Steve asked very quietly.

There was no answer, so he asked in a strained voice, “Do you want me to help you?”

“Yes.”

He lowered his hand and touched the surface of the warm dark water.   
It turned out to be difficult only in the first moment.

Steve leaned over and dipped his right hand into the water while his left hand made the Soldier look up so that Steve could see… see that face when his fingers brushed the Soldier’s thigh, found his length, touched it and wrapped it in a tight ring. The Soldier’s breath hitched. So did Steve’s, but he hardly noticed. The smoke-coloured eyes opened wide and grew hazy, his lips parted slightly, but no sound escaped. His eyelashes quivered and dropped.

The water rippled. The Soldier suddenly reached out to him, slowly, as if overcoming stiffness, turned his torso slightly and his wet forehead touched Steve’s chest. His leg was near the bathtub wall and he opened up, putting his other leg aside, the knee bent so invitingly the blood surged to Steve’s cheeks. He froze, dumfounded, without loosening the hold of his rock-tense fingers on the hard flesh.   
_The Soldier has to have a Master!_

After a second’s hesitation Steve buried his face in the Soldier’s hair, pressed his lips to the wet top of his head and moved his hand. At first it was three fingers, then the whole palm. Again and again. He put his other hand around the Soldier and placed his fingers on the metal; warmth and the sweet stupefaction of intimacy washed over him; fear, shame and passion mixed and interlaced in his ribcage.

 _Bucky’s sleeping_ , he thought, moving his hand, _Bucky’s sleeping and dreaming. If so… let it be a good dream…_   
All the barriers were only in his head.

But the flesh in his hand was like his own and somewhere at the back of his mind he was a bit puzzled why his body didn’t respond to familiar movements. Steve liked that tense firmness, he squeezed his fingers and the thin skin moved along the hard shaft together with his hand…

The black water splashed with the movement of his hand and never before had that rhythmical liquid sound made Steve experience such a shameful suffocating feeling. The Soldier was so distractedly close Steve couldn’t think of anything but him. Anything but the smell of his hair, his tense flesh in Steve’s hand. And the fact he was the reason for that reaction.

It turned him on.   
Excitement grew stronger, making something twitch painfully and sweetly in his groin, hot fog clouded his mind. Steve kissed the Soldier’s wet hair, moving his hand over and over… the shaft under his palm was hard and swollen, and Steve could feel its frantic tension. The Soldier pushed his hips toward Steve’s hand with growing confidence, his jaw muscles flexed, he breathed loudly and had a death grip on the bathtub ledge instead of clinging to Steve. Steve’s t-shirt was soaked, the water was rapidly growing cold, the Soldier kept pushing into his hand insistently and that rough rhythm made the water swirl, rolling around him, splash on his chest, teasing his hardened nipples. Steve could feel his swelling desire, feel that the Soldier was already going… was at the edge of…

More and more and more…

The Soldier exploded soundlessly and violently, shivering at the peak of it and jerking as if a naked wire had been dropped into the water. Steve watched goose bumps cover his skin, raising the fine hairs on his arm, he felt the Soldier shudder and lose his breath, choke on it for a few seconds, stop breathing altogether…

_God, Buck, how long it was since you’ve been with anyone?_

They released their hold on each other simultaneously, but not immediately. Taking his hand out of the bathtub, Steve glanced at the Soldier’s face. The man visibly blushed. It seemed as if he was in a trance, drowsiness and shock fighting for supremacy. He seemed unsure what to do. Wait for punishment or not. He felt good and that feeling caused confusion.

What was he supposed to do, feeling so good?

Steve couldn’t resist leaning over, making him look up and kissing him. Lightly as a feather, as if he was afraid of burning himself or the Soldier. With his other hand he brushed the man’s wet hair back from his face, unconsciously repeating the signal sign. The Soldier turned his head and pressed his lips to the skin of Steve’s opened palm. A tickling shiver went through it and Steve gasped, as if the Soldier’s lips had touched something far less innocent than just his hand.

Steve stepped back, squeezed the other man’s shoulder and rose to his feet, suddenly realizing he could hardly stand. He adjusted the water and passed the shower head to the Soldier, though in the first moment it seemed to him the Soldier was going to drop it.

“Rinse off. I’ll fetch a towel.”  

“Steve…”

The Soldier suddenly stopped in the middle of a sentence, the shower head in his hand, like he didn’t know what to say or how to do it. It had never happened before, and Steve felt a severe suffocating surge of tenderness. The Soldier’s thoughts were a mess and it was hard for him to put them into words. Because he felt too good. Steve leaned over into a kiss. The kiss was deep and long, though Steve had promised himself he wouldn’t do it, but that moving confusion on the Soldier’s face made him so cute Steve couldn’t resist. The man responded straight away, hungrily. As if he’d been waiting for it.

“This?” Steve smiled. The Soldier’s lips twitched – an uncertain smile, its shadow.

He nodded.   
A little later they sat on the bed with their arms around each other. In silence. Steve wrapped the Soldier in the red cover, head and feet and all, and petted him, toweled him off. Dried him. Hugged him from behind, pulled him close. The Soldier clung to him. He smelled like shampoo and herbs, and Steve constantly wanted to touch him. So badly, his palms itched.

The Soldier trembled shallowly. Steve didn’t know if it was cold or something else, but just in case he hugged the Soldier tighter.   
* 

  
He was very afraid it would become the beginning. They’d crossed the line after all. In spite of all that excitement the ‘beginning’ evoked in him, Steve couldn’t make up his mind about what to do with it. Because leave it unfettered – and it would go downhill. Even if they were able to grow more attached to each other, he couldn’t expect Bucky not to notice. Bucky had the Soldier’s memory. He would remember everything, even the ‘irrelevant’. What was worse, Steve wasn’t sure he’d manage to control himself and not kiss Bucky. Even the gloomy and prickly guy his friend had become. From Steve’s perspective, Bucky and the Soldier were inseparable, even if the Soldier wasn’t Bucky he still was Bucky. Those were his lips. His hair, fingers and his metal stump at the place of the arm. That was Bucky. Even if still sleeping and deadly tired of nightmares of his long sleep. Bucky. He couldn’t do it to Bucky.   
Even if he would like to. Very much.

The training had passed as usual, outside, though the sky was overcast, low and gray, which depressed Steve’s already mirthless mood. The wind blew over the ground, trying to no avail to chase away the stuffy heat preceding a storm. The Soldier looked more absentminded than usual. Steve hoped the reason for it was the oncoming rain, not his gloomy mood, so he stopped their training early. He guessed right. When they were heading for their quarters, the first drops of the rain hit the hallway window glass.   
*

 

The Solder was taking a shower. He’d already been in there for a long time, much longer than his usual ten minutes. Steve had an internal debate, listening to rhythmic splashing of water behind the door. Should he check on him? He didn’t like it, everything was in tatters and he was losing control over what was happening at lightning speed, setting his foot on a slippery slope where he was totally defenseless. Steve stopped that thought, faced it and had a good think.

He’d been acting wrong. The thoughts about Bucky and the depravity of their relationship with the Soldier had dulled his sense of danger. Something might’ve happened. Something might’ve happened with the Soldier and he was standing here foolishly, blushing like a kissless virgin, and speculating if it was too impolite to break into the bathroom! Idiot!   
Steve called the Soldier and, receiving no answer, unhesitatingly rapped on the door. To no purpose. That door was never locked.

The Soldier stood with his back to him and was bluish pale, his bloodless skin was covered with goose bumps and at first Steve thought he could hear his teeth chattering through the sound of water. But the Soldier hardly shivered. He stood still, his head bowed, and his hair trailed along both sides of his face like icicles.

He’d twisted the tap handle on full and now hard sprays of icy cold water were stinging his head, shoulders and chest.

Even without looking Steve knew – he was hard.    
Steve rushed forward, turned on the hot tap and touched the Soldier with his other hand, signaling him to stay put. The Soldier twitched violently under his touch. He was ice cold and Steve’s palm must’ve seemed scalding hot to him. The water got warmer, but Steve couldn’t make himself leave.

The urge to reduce that last distance, to put his arms around the Soldier, to press his whole body to him was irrepressible.

“Why are you doing it?” he whispered desperately, rubbing the Soldier’s arm and side with his palms. “You could’ve dealt with it another way. I’ve already said you can do it on your own. You know how, don’t you? Like this…”

Steve took his limp hand and pulled it, put its palm to the tense flesh, covered the Soldier’s fingers with his own, wrapping the other man’s cold fingers around his own dick and holding them in place. But the Soldier’s fingers suddenly slipped from under his hand and reversed their position, covered Steve’s hand firmly, wrapped around it, squeezed and… Steve exhaled loudly, squeezing the thick slick shaft – metal covered with thin skin. The Soldier moved Steve’s hand with his own, subtly pushing his hips in time with his movements. Steve stroked that hard length and all thoughts were swept out of his mind, the only thing left were the sensations in his palm. He couldn’t resist stroking the pink head clockwise with his thumb. The Soldier puffed a short hissy breath through his clenched teeth, drawing toward the touch… and back, touching Steve with his bare buttocks.

Steve swallowed loudly, feeling a tide of arousal sweeping over him.

He stepped very close, squeezed his fist tighter and accelerated the pace. He felt dizzy, his thoughts racing, their fingers embraced the Soldier’s hard dick and tensed in synch, moved in rhythm.    
Steve’s other hand rested on the Soldier’s side until he remembered it was there and moved it to the man’s stomach, his hot palm soaked up the skin’s coldness and the sensation of living flesh trembling under his hand. Their fingers embraced and enveloped it tightly, the Soldier’s pulse beat violently into Steve’s palm; the Soldier’s fingers moved his hand even faster. He swayed and pressed his back against Steve’s chest, seeking support, his buttocks barely touching Steve’s trousers. Steve’s t-shirt was getting soaked, he felt tight twitching in his crotch and moved his hand jerkily harder and harder, thinking only about the Soldier’s – Bucky’s – hand which held tightly and directed his own.

And also about how to escape from here. As far as possible.

The Soldier threw his head back against Steve’s shoulder, his wet hair brushing Steve’s cheek, the shower water splashed on his chest. He rocked harder, moving towards Steve’s hand. Steve leaned, kissed his real shoulder and drew his mouth up the Soldier’s neck, almost biting, inhaling, sucking in the water and the taste of Bucky’s skin. His lips and teeth pressed firmly into the beating pulse and the body in his arms vibrated like a string.

“Who am I?” he asked into the ear, buried under the locks of hair.

He licked it, rolled it on his tongue and nibbled.

“You’re Steve.”

He accelerated the pace. Faster, harder and rougher…

“Who am I?”   
His hand stopped in spite of the Soldier’s efforts to make it move. The Soldier didn’t want to lose those sensations, he was at the breaking point, he didn’t want to stop so he tensed up, trying to draw forward, push into the clenched fist, but Steve held him back with his other hand. His thumb circled the head of the Soldier’s dick. He got a disappointed and painful exhale in response, but it wasn’t enough. He was itching to make the Soldier scream.

“Steeeve…”

Only hearing the Soldier groan his name, he realized he couldn’t’ take it anymore. Not a second.   
Steve resumed his movements, sharp and fast, and the Soldier arched his back, squeezing Steve’s wrist so hard it creaked, pressing the back of his wet head to Steve’s shoulder, hissing and spilling on the wall. The thick drops were immediately washed down into the drain. All at once the Soldier went limp, his breathing heavy and uneven. Steve kissed the back of his head, the tangled hair there. He took his trembling hand off as soon as the Soldier unclenched his fingers and his limp hand fell.

“Do you want me to leave ‘til you finish washing?”

He could hardly talk. The whole length of the Soldier’s body was still pressed against him. The man leaned on him as if he was some kind of a stand. Steve didn’t have a dry thread on, but he didn’t dare step back.

“Yes.”

The Solder stepped forward, under the spray, still breathing heavily and Steve let him go. He couldn’t resist clapping him on the wet back though.

“Get warm. But don’t do anything foolish now, okay? I’ll get changed.”

He quickly left the bathroom, crossed the room and the hallway, entered his cubicle and closed the door.

No sooner had he unbuckled his belt than he got his fingers around his own dick, gagging himself with his soaked t-shirt the Soldier had pressed into. He rapidly thrust into his fist, the same fist, wet and slick with water and semen, muffling his groans and biting the fabric. The water dripped into his throat, but he barely noticed because his thoughts were still there, in the shower, and the strong body covered with water droplets was shivering and moving in his arms…

In his mind's eye he pushed the Soldier to the wall, and his hands squeezed the round wet buttocks, settling his hard swollen length between them, and then he started rubbing, melting in that rhythmical sliding, looking at the dimples above the small of the Soldier’s back, the long line of his backbone, the shining plates of his left shoulder with the red star… and his hair. The Soldier’s long hair. He wanted to take it into his mouth and bite so badly, making their owner utter a low moan or a roar… And now he wanted, wanted so much…    
To spill his come on that arched back, splattering the perky buttocks, watching hungrily as the warm seed dripped slowly into the cleft between them…

Steve crashed on the floor, shivering with aftershocks. His semen cooled on his fist and the floor, his head rang. He spat the makeshift gag out and stretched his legs, leaning against the door. Then he banged the back of his head against it, not very hard, but resoundingly. He closed his eyes.

Everything was very bad.

Steve had never fantasized about Bucky like that. Vice versa – long ago when he’d still been the owner of a skinny frame, under his blanket he’d used to dream of the things he’d have let Bucky do to him if his friend had wanted it. But never like that. Terror was growing slowly and heavily, forcing out the bliss of his recent climax. His desires didn’t look exactly innocent anymore and Steve was afraid it would only grow worse.    
He’d thought about a sexual component of affection. He’d thought about it and rejected it every time, shunning touching on that theme even in his thoughts. Because it was Bucky. And Bucky was sleeping. Even if the Soldier was interested in him… he couldn’t. Even if Bucky’s exposed underself wanted him. Steve didn’t doubt it anymore. He’d been hard. The Soldier had pressed against him and couldn’t avoid feeling it. The Soldier had rubbed on him and done it on purpose. It’d been a provocative act. Pure and simple. Good heavens…

When Steve returned to the room, dressed cleanly, the Soldier, who’d also changed clothes, looked up at him. Steve smiled at him warmly, took the chess set from the shelf and started arranging the pieces.

They played easily, as if nothing extraordinary had happened. Except they looked at each other for a long time in front of the cryochamber. Then the Soldier reached out and kissed him. Softly and even modestly. But Steve noticed his nostrils fluttering when he approached. The Soldier smelled it. He couldn’t miss it. Steve had to do something with it. Immediately. Without delay.   
*   


He made a hard decision to do nothing at all. It was really hard – for both of them. It was time to get a grip on himself and take control of it ‘til it was too late. For four days Steve stopped all caresses, leaving only light kisses before the cryosleep. Chaste ones. He tried to put a bridle on himself and succeeded. After all, he always could ease excessive tension right here, in the shower, though every time after his climax Steve felt shitty, remembering… no, not Bucky in cryo. He remembered the eyes of the Soldier who was deprived of tenderness.

In the last four days Steve saw more emotions in those eyes than he’d seen for all the time they’d spent together. The Soldier didn’t understand his spiritual torments and deep inner problems. Steve kept noticing his cautious timid attempts to touch, to come closer; from the light in his eyes Steve could figure out what the Soldier would like and how exactly he’d like it. The Soldier had twice caught Steve’s hand and every time Steve had stopped him. Gently, but firmly.

Every time he read different things in those eyes. Incomprehension. Surprise, pain, sorrow, confusion and finally such a strikingly obvious expression of grief… almost suffering.

‘What am I being punished for?’

It was the Soldier’s face that popped up in his mind after the haze of bliss dissipated. Steve was torn into pieces. It wasn’t the expression he’d been aiming for, but he couldn’t…

He couldn’t explain it to the Soldier. He didn’t know how.   
*

One thought had often crossed Steve’s mind – when you didn’t take an action, hesitated and skipped your turn, then someone would do it for you. You might not like it, but if you’d relieved yourself of responsibility and handed over control to someone else, you had to be ready.

Steve’s problem was solved for him by the Soldier.

Nothing foretold it. They trained as usual, ate their meal, played chess, even shared a kiss. The Soldier looked oddly pensive that day and Steve should’ve realized – when he became like this it meant he’d thought intensely about something. Steve didn’t notice anything. He put it down to the rain.

The Soldier froze on the spot in front of the cryochamber. Like he’d done before that second kiss. He stopped confidently and stone still, his whole body said he wasn’t going to take another step. A deep furrow appeared between his eyebrows. Steve approached to figure out what had happened and even touched his shoulder – the left one, avoiding undue contact with the skin. Then the Soldier angrily turned his head to him. Like a lash. Steve saw grim concentration on his face and something else… He didn’t have a chance to understand what exactly it was.

“I’m unstable,” the Soldier said sullenly.

After that Steve was crashed against the wall.   
The Soldier rushed to him immediately, smashed into him – skin to skin. His eyes darkened, like a stormy sky, he looked at Steve with desperate fury and bitter disappointment, as if he were a drunkard from under whose nose a glass was stolen, who a nasty prank was played on. Yes, he scented freedom. Whatever was in his eyes, it wasn’t submission.

“A step back, Солдат,” Steve said in spite of his own directive not to give orders.

But the situation was out of control and he needed to get it back on track somehow. The Soldier couldn’t disobey a direct order. He mustn’t have done it. But he ignored it, ogling Steve. Destabilization had been building up. Suddenly Steve realized with horror he’d been nurturing it himself during all those four days of ‘chaste’ behavior. He’d done it for good reasons, but…

‘What I’m being punished for?’

A rebellion.

Steve was afraid of seeing an amock that always followed a destabilization message, but the Soldier’s disobedience smelled different. Like sweat and bodily liquids. Like sex.   
The Soldier clung to him, ramming his knee between Steve’s legs, pressed against him and rubbed his hips on him hungrily. The look in his eyes was totally wild. Steve was lost, feeling the Soldier’s heat with his hip, his glee of sensations, the exciting proximity of their bodies, feeling the Soldier’s thick lust and his own manhood traitorously grow heavy and hard…

“No.”

He grabbed the Soldier’s shoulders, intending to avoid debauchery through sheer force of will. He knew now he was strong enough to do it, because it was better to have a fight than…

“But you wanted me to have desires!” the Soldier shouted, clinging harder, almost painfully.

In his eyes despair, fury and dark lust were raging. The lust was so thick you could wrap yourself up in it. Steve froze. They stared at each other and that closeness made Steve’s body throb from lips to feet. He could feel the Soldier’s hunger, powerful and insatiable, and that hunger disarmed him. It was the first time Steve saw so many emotions at once in this face. There was a plea in the cloudy eyes, but even more: revolt, challenge, craving, impatience, the veil of desire and that grief which had shocked Steve so profoundly the other day. As if the Soldier was losing something precious and couldn’t hold it. And he needed it so badly, so impossibly badly…      
So that was how his disobedience started to manifest.

Steve passed his hands over the Soldier’s shoulder and drew him closer, hugged him. Bucky’s smell alone made him feel a bit swimmy, his skin ached for a touch, and suddenly thinking became really difficult.

A strange word ‘sexsomnia’ flashed through his mind, but the Soldier rubbed his hips and groin on him and Steve immediately forgot all his thoughts. A gasping sound passed through his lips. The Soldier thrust again him, sending a current of mind-blowing impulses along his body. His hot breathing burnt Steve’s neck. He rubbed and shoved against Steve with his whole body, and Steve met his movements halfway. It was the first time the Soldier acted so unrestrainedly, did so much on his own, without any order or permission. For him it was a collapsing of barriers, an outburst of sensuality. Steve, mad with sensations, bent to meet him, catching the freshness of their contact. He felt hot everywhere the Soldier touched him.

“No, wait.”

In the heat haze of lust he suddenly felt rubbing and pressure hurt him. He had to get his clothes off or at least unbutton it, get free.

“Let’s use our hands…”

He tried to push the Soldier back, but there was no question of that – the Soldier clung to him like a leech, squeezing him between his thighs and rubbing on his body, not allowing shift himself an inch. And moving, moving, moving…

Making Steve completely surrender.

“Okay…” Steve gave up, frenziedly pressing his lips to the Soldier’s temple. “Fine, let it be like this… like this…”

And he really felt good, awfully good, gracious heaven, just unbearably, inexcusably good. That undisguised rebelliousness, unpredictability, gradually growing volition… It turned him on. Steve breathed it in, losing his head, was filled, flushed with heavy heat, closer and closer and…

The Soldier arched towards him – as if a wave traversed his body, a complex flexible move. His pushes become harder and stronger, he shuddered jerkily, his chest and stomach started twitching; he uttered a short sound, something between a groan and a scream – and then that heat broke free, gushed out, wrung his insides into a tight knot. Steve moaned, feeling a blast wave coming through his body and his skin crawling...

They panted loudly and heavily in the deafening ringing silence.

Then the Soldier stepped back, slowly and stiffly, as if the movement took tremendous effort. Staring blindly straight ahead, he started backing away as if the last order had finally caught him. Steve grabbed his left side just in time – it was an unfair trick, the Soldier couldn’t fling off his hand like that. Steve took his wrist with his other hand, preventing him from moving back, dropped his hand on the Soldier’s, wrapping it into the warmth of his palm, and drew him closer again. Their fingers intertwined. The air smelled like sweat and semen, but Steve already wasn’t embarrassed. He drew the Soldier into a kiss, calming the panic in his eyes, pressing him closer, letting him feel the outcome of this sudden outburst.

The soaked fabric got almost cold, chilled his crotch and stuck to his body, the skin felt a bit brush burnt, but he was good. Even if everything could not be worse, Steve still felt darn good.  

“Sorry.” He smiled guiltily, tracing his thumb over the Soldier’s warm palm. “I got it. Won’t do it again.”

The Soldier licked his lips and looked at him so pointedly Steve raised his eyebrows unintentionally.

‘Well done. A good Master,’ those flighty, almost quizzical eyes told him.   
* 

_…As the days went by, the evolution of like into love was accelerated. White Fang himself began to grow aware of it, though in his consciousness he knew not what love was. It manifested itself to him as a void in his being—a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamoured to be filled. It was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of the new god’s presence. At such times love was joy to him, a wild, keen-thrilling satisfaction. But when away from his god, the pain and the unrest returned; the void in him sprang up and pressed against him with its emptiness, and the hunger gnawed and gnawed unceasingly._

* 

Steve made a deal with himself.

Now after all compulsory daily activities they took off their clothes – each of them his own – and got fully naked to touch each other, nestle into each other’s warm nudity, fall, entwined, on the red cover, skin to skin. To cuddle up, interlace their limbs, press their burning loins together and immediately start thrashing and rocking in unison. Steve allowed nothing but hands and skin. He licked, nibbled and sucked the Soldier’s fingers, feeling with his thigh how much this spectacle aroused the Soldier. His own tongue and lips got all tingly, as if he touched Bucky’s far more intimate body parts.

It was Bucky’s body. He had to remember it.

They just made out and kissed and it was tantalizing, but also good. They explored each other gently, with pleasure, and Steve had stopped getting embarrassed by that new level of physical contact long ago. He wanted to caress the Soldier ceaselessly, all of him. They wrapped themselves up in each other’s bodies and Steve could justify it with big words about a level of trust and a new stage of mutual understanding all he wanted, but they still were sexual games where lips, hands and rubbing brought them to the peak.

Every time. Like today. It would happen, it would happen for sure, very soon…

“I’m unstable,” the Soldier whispered in a husky trembling voice.

Holy heavens, he didn’t even realize how hot it sounded, how much, how fiercely it aroused Steve…

“That’s good.” Steve kissed his trustingly offered throat just above the sharp Adam's apple, palming and squeezing them both. “Good…”

He still kept telling himself that it was not all so bad. That he controlled the situation.

He was too afraid to think otherwise.

  
*   
The training fell through. They were too starved for each other for the sparring not to finish like that. No one was to blame, they just both got turned on, touched each other and fell. Steve moved his hand and thought if some day he caught the Soldier doing it to himself, he’d bleed out from his nose. He desperately wanted to be able to see it, so much that his groin ached with arousal and his pose started getting uncomfortable. But he went on, looking forward to the moment he’d press that palm, gripping his shoulder, to himself and look at that face…

The Soldier violently arched his back, spurted his semen on Steve’s fingers and collapsed on the mats, panting. But… wrong.

Slowly, very slowly Steve removed his hand, scrambled to his knees and got upright, staring into the cloudy gray eyes. Then he licked his lips and hung his head, realizing he hadn’t been mistaken.

“You were supposed to let me know when you come around,” he said quietly.

“Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to come around to this.”

Bucky’s hot raspy voice already sounded with a hint of anger.

“How did you realize?”

“Your respiratory rhythm changed.”

“Man, can’t hide things from you.”

Bucky sat up, assessed his disarrayed clothes and started fixing himself up squeamishly, almost furiously. Steve embarrassingly remembered what his hand was covered with and hastily wiped it on the straw mats. Bucky rose to his feet and headed to the bathroom. Steve could hear the water start. Bucky didn’t stay there long and when he reappeared his entire look seemed to say, ‘So what the fuck was that?’ He’d fold his arms across his chest if he could. Steve felt a cold lump under his diaphragm, but he had no choice.

“Bucky… It’s not what it looks like.”

He realized at once he’d gotten started on the wrong foot.

“Really? So how does it look then?”

Steve felt his cheeks flush, but didn’t show his embarrassment. First and foremost he needed to say the most important thing.

“I didn’t give you any orders. It was his initiative and I had to try…”

“And you didn’t ask me.”

Bucky’s words pierced Steve like nails. Steve shook his head.

“I could predict your reaction. Don’t think I’m trying to wriggle out of it. It’s my fault and I’m sorry.”

“You’re lying.”

That was when Steve finally understood Bucky’s condition. He understood what hopeless desperation looked like. The total futility of trying to explain himself, to clarify the complexity of the whole situation when the closest person looked at you like you’d betrayed them. When this person had already made up their mind about it. Bucky stared right in his face and his eyes made Steve’s stomach knot. He looked as if Steve had betrayed his trust. In fact, that's how it was.

He didn’t give up though. He had to keep talking since there always was a chance to explain everything.

“I didn’t wish for things to turn… like that.”

“And I thought the idea was to get rid of him, not to please him,” Bucky sighed, pacing the gym. He wasn’t looking at Steve anymore. “What did he buy you? Is it because he can follow any order?”

“I didn’t use you!”

Steve had a sick feeling in his stomach. Did Bucky really think Steve had used him… like that? He started shivering.

“I didn’t order you or anything like that! I would never do that, Buck! What’s going on between us… He’s just… getting attached to me. And looking for a way to express it.”

“And that’s why you fuck him. Don’t forget about condoms. He’ll forget for sure.”   
Pain compressed his ribcage, filling his lungs with piercing cold, and that cold was dangerous, it was rising from some dark depths, from the abysses of Steve’s soul he knew nothing about.

“What can you know about him?!” Steve exploded, realizing that he was close to punching his friend like never before.

“Indeed,” Bucky answered in a strangely pensive and blank voice. “What can I know.”

And suddenly Steve saw Bucky. A real, pre-war, old Bucky, as if all those long years had never happened…

He saw everything in those eyes. In those eyes Steve, crushed by grief of loss, rejected Bucky’s help. In those eyes naked Steve, wrapped up in a bed sheet, stared past him, wall-eyed, so pale it seemed he was about to throw up. Steve, who’d become so huge, got him out of the lab and they both were alive, and joy of a reunion pushed them into madness, brought their lips together…  

Steve was greeted by Peggy Carter, she entered the bar in her red dress and looked at no one but Captain America. Steve kissed Sharon Carter on the parking lot near the airport… and Bucky smiled at him. In that smile bitterness was mixed with amused ‘That’s my boy!’

Bucky didn’t remember any of his romantic interests’ names. The Winter Soldier remembered Steve Rogers.

Steve broke the code twice… Twice…

The Soldier kissed Steve on the mouth, groaned under his hand… because… the Soldier… he…

“But it’s not him, is it?” Steve mouthed. Astonishment stuck in his throat and affected his voice. “It’s you.”

The ‘lullaby’… Deactivation via a human factor.

He’d said everything then. Back then.

This thought burnt him.

“Buck…”

Steve could feel his eyes filled with tears. Bucky, without looking, passed him and headed for the room.

“Put me back into the cryochamber,” he ordered dully.

Steve lost it. He rushed to Bucky, caught him at the door, crushed his chest into his friend’s angry back, wrapped his hands around him and squeezed, hugged, pressing him to himself and making him stay put, in a vice.

“What does it have to do with the cryochamber?”

Steve thought he was shouting, but in fact he forced out only a constrained whisper and his quivering voice almost turned into a sob.

“You love me!”

 


	9. STAGE FOUR (B)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for explicite sexual content in this chapter!

Silence settled in the room. Thick and oppressive. Steve stood, pressed against his friend’s back, rooted to the ground. His heart pounded against the spot between Bucky’s shoulder blades as if it wanted to burst through the skin and fall into Bucky. Bucky flinched impatiently and helplessly, but Steve only hugged him tighter.

_I’m not gonna let you go, don’t even think about it. Sorry, sorry, buddy, I’m so stupid…_

Then Bucky took a very long heavy sigh, gave up and covered his hands with his own.

“Did you just have to twist the knife?” he asked quietly.

“I did.” Feeling his submission, Steve turned Bucky’s shaggy head to him. “I did.”

The words were already whispered into Bucky’s lips before Steve pressed his mouth to them, branded a kiss into them, holding Bucky in the ring of his arms because he couldn’t let him go. He waited. He kissed and crushed Bucky’s lips and when his friend, with a piteous groan, began to respond, angrily and fervently, Steve almost teared up. Bucky kissed him. So frantically and devouringly as if all his hunger and love spurted into his lips. Steve had been missing those lips desperately.  
He wasn’t mistaken. It was for real. Bucky really loved him, a fool…

A damned fork flooded him with mind-blowing vibration, resonating in his bones and fingertips, twitching in his crotch. It was Bucky. The realization made Steve feel so sweet and voluptuous it started getting hard to breathe. It was Bucky and Steve wanted to touch him, very, very much. When Steve had felt that barrier in the Romanian flat, he’d wanted to break it down. But he hadn’t known how to do it, feeling his usual suffocating shyness… only with Bucky he’d still felt that shyness. Besides, there had been no time for that, although now he remembered that both action and inaction were considered as crimes and, in relation to Bucky, he’d already been inactive for too long.

“Just so you know, Sharon and me, we didn’t…”

“I know you didn’t do anything,” Bucky interrupted with a smirk.

He sounded timid and faltering, as if he still couldn’t fully believe it was for real.

“Your kisses even look like a virgin’s ones.”

They breathed heavily and stood very close. Steve hugged Bucky and stroked his back.

“Really?”

Bucky stopped smiling.

“At least, when you kiss sticklike blondes who aim to get their grubby little hands on what doesn’t belong to them.”

“You’re jealous,” Steve suddenly realized.

“You bet!”

“I mean, of the Soldier.”

Bucky sized him up with a long serious look, like Steve was an idiot.

“I’ve never had so many suicidal thoughts, Steve,” he admitted quietly.

Steve tsked. “A suicide because of jealousy? It’s something new. Were you afraid he was going to replace you?”

“Wow, can’t believe you’ve figured it out by yourself.” He suddenly turned serious. “Isn’t it true, anyway? You and him…”

“I’m with you, Buck.” The tip of Steve’s nose brushed Bucky’s. “Whose fault is it if he was more honest in the end?”

Now it was Bucky’s turn to look aside and purse his mouth.

“It’s… not the stuff we should try to find out after seventy years of separation and an avalanche of dead bodies behind,” he said without smiling. “I’m in no shape to qualify for… anything. Even back then I failed.”

“You should’ve told me. I wouldn’t have suffered for so many years.”

“Suffered?” Bucky smiled bitterly. “You?”

“And you thought what, blockhead? You fed me a whole lot of exciting revelations, but three days later asked Pam Winnerby out. I almost went nuts.”

“But…” Bucky blinked in confusion. “That morning… you took it like… I thought…”

“Idiot. If you knew how much I cried because of you.”

The silence was thick and viscous. New.

“Are you saying I had a chance?” Bucky asked very quietly. “I had it and wasted it?”

Steve considered it seriously. And answered honestly.

“No. You hardly did then. I’d chicken out anyway. And I’d lie to you that it’s wrong because I’d think it’ll be better for both of us like this.”

Bucky laughed softly.

“Indeed. That sounds like something you’d do. So when was I supposed to confess my lofty feelings to you?”

“When you kissed me near the camp.”  
“I was not all there, so it was forgivable for me,” he snickered joylessly. “And then a mind-blowing Carter appeared and the moment was hopelessly gone.”

“And now?” Steve stroked Bucky’s hot cheeks with his fingers. “Say it and then I’ll kiss you.”

“This isn't going to work, Steve!” Bucky snapped. “Since we have this talk, I want everything he had and at double the rate! I’ve kinda been waiting for so many years to…”

Steve made him shut up. Angrily and hard. Bucky didn’t try to argue, but hugged him and responded fervently, letting him know who was an expert on kissing here and who tagged along. It made Steve giddy and was totally different. More bitter. Sweeter.

Steve left Bucky’s lips and went down to his neck, causing a surprised gasp. It was Bucky. He knew that body, he desired every part of it and the realization of the fact that now it was Bucky made him painfully hard.

“So… what are we going to do?” Bucky’s voice sounded excitingly breathy. “Do you prefer only a frozen version of me now or… there's hope for the current me yet?”

“Stupid. It can be resolved in no time. Just don’t leave anymore.”

Bucky looked back at the cryochamber and Steve immediately pressed his mouth to the curve of his friend’s neck. His lips ached with desire to touch him.

“I’d tear it to bits,” he confessed softly into the warm skin. “But it wouldn’t be polite to His Majesty. We need to carry on our training. You will become him like before, for three hours a day, ‘til we make it. As for the rest of the time, I won’t go anywhere from you. T’Challa won’t let you go ‘til the lullaby works but you don’t have to escape to cryosleep from me, Buck. All the more, from yourself.”

“Are you sure?”

This word alone made his whole body respond thrillingly. Because it meant ‘yes’; holy heavens, that’s what it was.

“Because you’re going to yell uncle. I have so many ideas on my mind…”

“I’ll survive.”

They were already rubbing against each other. Promisingly, with willingness for continuation. Bucky made him kiss his lips again, so they kissed, stopped to look at each other and got back to kissing.

“You have strange taste, you know? I was a punk, barely reached your shoulder, even my ribs stuck out.”

“Yes.” Bucky smiled with his eyes only. “But I still just went and flipped over you, believe that?”

“I do,” Steve smirked. “I should’ve figured out why it was only me. You twice…”

Bucky kissed him ardently, cutting him short.

“Shut up. If you’re going to ramble about him instead of kissing me, I’ll go nuts.”

“Yeah, sorry. I got distracted.”

*   
  
They scrambled and hurried, as if afraid that one of them was going to come to his senses, sober up. Remember what they were getting themselves into. That was why they couldn’t stop. That was why they needed to get themselves into everything.

Steve wanted to kiss so much, he was hungry for it. Desire to press himself against the other’s naked body made his skin tingle.

A kiss. A waterfall of kisses. Shyness choked Steve; he wanted to speak, make jokes, fill that uneasiness full of head-spinning anticipation, but his mouth was busy. He could feel his previous powerful impulse to fall on the floor with Bucky, on his back, and this time the prospect was more possible. The more so since Bucky already tugged at his t-shirt. He needed both arms for this, so Steve ripped it off over his head on his own. He did the same to Bucky’s t-shirt and as soon as Bucky’s face appeared from the neck hole, he started biting his lips greedily.

Their clothes fell with dull rustling like shellings, shattered on the floor, following them. Steve pressed his lips to the firm scar where flesh and metal met. Bucky’s palm ended up between his legs, stroked and squeezed him through the underwear…

“Damn, Steve,” Bucky gasped into his neck, without taking his hand off. “You are really… Oh my god…”

Bucky pushed him to the bed, trying to feel him whole with the one hand. His eyes got totally cloudy, but not because of the code. He was continually trying to smile, but his lips betrayed him and he kept losing his breath.

“So much of you…” he muttered incoherently and heatedly. “How do you like doin’ it, eh? Want to know everythin’ about you. Ah jeez, Steve… How do you like it better?”

“I don’t know,” Steve whispered honestly and only when Bucky stopped touching him, he realized what he’d just said.

Steve looked into his friend’s face. A haze of lust slipped from him in a second. Dumfounded, Bucky stared at him, unable to wrap his head around that idea. It couldn’t fit his mind, constantly bumping into the barrier of ‘It’s impossible’.

“Buck…”

“Wait. No. No-no-no, don’t you tell me that… that time was…”

Bucky couldn’t gather his thoughts, too shocked to put his question properly.

Steve felt his neck and cheeks blushing.

“I won’t. But… in fact, it kinda was.” He smiled a bit guiltily.

Bucky closed his eyes contritely.

Yes, Bucky was the first person he had relations with. And so far, the only one.

Steve was slightly embarrassed by this fact of his biography. It wasn’t like he wanted something else though…

Bucky must’ve felt guilty. That’s why he used to introduce him to girls, share his experience, encourage and support him, obtrusively pushing him into the arms of another Nancy, Theresa and Helen. Now he must’ve decided that Captain America – a national sex symbol – just couldn’t resist temptations of modernity. But in reality Steve had never got around to it. At first he hadn’t invited girls to that kind of attention, then there had been the serum, the war… He’d had no time, he’d had Peggy and careful plans, he’d missed Bucky, then Peggy, then Sharon had appeared and it had also been half-hearted, without much devil.  
Steve had never been good at seduction and in general he was a bit afraid of women. During the war he’d worked in a female workplace, watched girls in their natural habitat and realized he wouldn’t be able to trust them for a very long time. And apart from that… He’d been stalked on, kissed and run after. Girls had flirted with him and tried to capture his interest. And the more such attention he’d had, the fewer emotions it’d brought out.

Right. Steve had felt he’d missed something. Until this moment.

And now he was awfully glad everything had turned out like that. Because a beet red Bucky looked so adorable Steve could probably tear up.  
But Bucky had no time to burst into comments on this subject – Steve drew him back, brushed his lips against his cheek and came for Bucky’s mouth. And everything was right again.

Bucky didn’t mind. That fresh discovery seemed to put new heart into him because stiffness left his body, he started kissing Steve more ardently, stroking his crotch more confidently. Almost roughly. Damn well.

“Want it like that time?”

“Want it like now.”  
Everything was spontaneous, with almost no prep. Steve let this impulse catch and drift him so that he couldn’t doubt, so that fear and nervousness wouldn’t get the upper hand. They rolled on the bed, stroked each other, rubbed skin against skin, promisingly, kissed at random, jerkily and out of turn. Teasing each other. Steve bashfully stretched himself with his fingers lubricated with massage oil. Bucky asked him to do it and, eyes wide open, watched Steve stroke himself with glistening fingers. Steve already understood Bucky hadn’t exaggerated when he mentioned his fantasies.

He wasn’t afraid. The gleeful anticipation of reviving those sensations was twitching inside. As for the necessity to do all these obscenities… the expression alone with which Bucky was looking at him was enough to bear with it. After all, Steve indeed owed him…   
“You aren’t comfortable like that. Let’s switch…”

“No. I want be able to see you.”

Bucky’s voice dropped an octave and Steve felt butterflies in his stomach. Bucky sat on the bed between his opened legs, Steve’s thighs rested on Bucky’s. His eyelids were drooping with passion. Holding onto Bucky’s knees, Steve from under his eyelashes watched Bucky align himself with his hand.

Penetration hurt. Steve hissed unintentionally with the overfilling intrusion, tensing and feeling a sting of the irrational fear that Bucky was trying to get into him like a hand into a glove. Bucky was a supersoldier, he could tear through solid granite let alone subdue disobedient tightness of a stubborn body. But after hearing a painful moan, Steve remembered with great difficulty that he was a supersoldier, too. Then he thought about muscle tension and pressure force and laughed soflty, realizing they matched each other.

“Hey, what about some help here?”

Bucky smiled, but panic in his eyes brought traps to Steve’s mind.

“Do you really think I remember how to do it?” Steve asked hoarsely, trying to suppress the reflex. “I was drunk.”

“Push me out.”  
Steve risked tensing his muscles shyly towards penetration and suddenly Bucky was inside, at one thrust, every inch of him, easily and smoothly. Steve gasped with surprise and fullness.

“That’s it,” Bucky whispered with a broad smile.

Steve had never seen such a happy expression on his face in this century as it was at that moment. Not once since the war had started. Desire, gentleness, happiness. Delight. There was so much love in those gray eyes, it took Steve’s breath away.

“That’s it, my little one…”

This epithet almost made Steve burst out laughing, but he strangled a laugh, afraid that it’d make him tense again. He didn’t want to do it. The pain was almost gone. Bucky was inside, and only after taking him to the root, engulfing him whole Steve realized how much he wanted him. How bad he missed that sensation. Steve felt so overwhelmingly full it was hard to breathe. The blood was pounding like drumbeat in the spot where they were joined together.

Almost forgotten exposure, vulnerability… Steve wanted it deeper, harder, in rhythm.

Bucky moved, started pulling out slowly and Steve didn’t feel like laughing anymore.

“Steve…”

The massage oil helped, but the tension was still taking a toll and Bucky had to fight his way by force, on the brink of pain. They rather tortured each other than caressed, but they didn’t care – the desire to merge together was stronger and that coupling became stunning for Steve. He held his palms on Bucky’s knees and his whole body moved; those sensations confused him, mixed up the pleasure and pain centers. When Bucky moved particularly well inside, Steve’s hips rose to meet him as if of their own volition. His body responded to Bucky. Steve caught the rhythm and reached out to it, adjusting and tuning to the thrusts awkwardly, for a try. Bucky felt he wanted to move, switched his position slightly and sat on his heels, letting Steve wrap his legs around him to make it more comfortable for both of them. It was really good like that. It was in sync, deep and rhythmical.

Everything pulsated and burned between Steve’s legs. Bucky moved, kept his hand on Steve’s chest, ran his fingers along the cleavage between his pecs, over his stomach, twitching tensely under his palm. He stroked Steve with his open palm, tightly pressing it against the skin, as if he tried to cover as much of Steve as possible at one go, slowly, teasingly, just for pleasure, just because he could. He was fascinated because he had the right to do it. Steve looked at him and loved him most in the world, drowning in that feeling. He felt that Bucky would be the first. He’d wanted it for too long. Too much. He was close, but tried to hold back so he wouldn’t start slamming at the furious pace his body was capable of now.

Now Steve could feel only Bucky inside, his rhythm, his rapid hard thrusts. He groaned when Bucky’s fingers wrapped around his length and squeezed. Pressure grew, rose from the depths, about to flood out…

And then Steve began to recite. He could see through the haze that Bucky understood what he was going to do. But he didn’t stop him. Bucky’s eyes grew cloudy, he felt good and it was the right moment.

Steve began to recite.

Confidently and steadily like a spell.

“Желание. Ржавый. Семнадцать. Рассвет...”   
Bucky slammed into him on every word, plunged himself to the root in one clear rhythm with the crisp code words, joining their bodies tightly, sharply, pausing between thrusts, overcoming pain and fear with sweeping moves, mixing them up with pleasure and icy madness creeping into his mind. Hot passion and cold power connected and merged inside, twisting into a spring of a rising climax. Bucky cried out ravenously on every word, moved and moved ‘til Steve stopped at the second to last word. ‘Один’. Giving them time to feel each other.  
The string stretched so taut the purple veins bulged on Bucky’s arm like ropes. Barely breathing, he looked at Steve, his eyes hazy. Steve noticed the whites of his eyes were covered with a red net of capillaries burst with strain and nodded.

And then he was immediately crushed. Bucky blindly gave himself to the rhythm of his body and started hammering into Steve so hard in the first second he thought Bucky was going to rip him apart. He had to bite his lip for fear of moaning. He was afraid it could interrupt the code. The thrusts merged into one hot ceaseless sliding, burning and painful, but Bucky rubbed something in him so hotly and sweetly it seemed a spark was about to be struck inside and ignite a blasting fuse. Pressure rose and broadened. Bucky was already at the breaking point when Steve reached out for him and he obediently leaned closer so that Steve could trace the signal sign across his hot sweaty forehead. It was vitally important now when the two froze close like that – a footstep away from each other…

“Now,” Bucky whispered, either as a warning or as an order.

Steve finished the code. It was the least sexy thing one could think of at that moment, but Bucky collapsed on him, shivering, thrust one last time, deeply, hard – and screamed. A spasm traversed his body from head to foot, he jerked once, again. Steve held tight with both hands the shuddering body convulsing in ecstasy on top of him and it made him think about werewolves. And wonder if those two were now sharing one delightful paroxysm between them.

Only then Steve made himself come with his hand. The pressure spiked, erupted and heavy warmth flooded out of his tense groin. Steve shuddered into a short outburst of pleasure. It wasn’t very intense but it didn’t matter right now.

“I love you,” he whispered.

He combed his fingers through the wet hair, stroked the broad sweaty back and felt that body twitch under his hand and rapid scalding hot breathing burn his ear.

He added silently, I love you whoever you are right now.   
* 

“You know… Perhaps your idea does make some sense after all.”

They lay side by side, unable to move, like a breathless heap of meat in the middle of smoldering ruins. The red cover felt sizzling hot, the air rang around them.

“Was it your way of saying I’m not an idiot?” Steve queried.

He rather guessed the sense of the sentence than grasped it. Thinking was hard. His body ached pleasantly, blissful aerial emptiness reigned in his head. Like clouds above the jungles of Wakanda. Bucky’s heart beat into his stomach.

“No, you’re still an idiot, but… since I don’t belong to myself, I don’t even mind belonging to you in some measure.”

“Only in some measure?”

Bucky flashed him a contented roguish smile. His eyes sparkled merrily. He reached out and his thumb traced a long line across Steve’s wet forehead to his temple.

His eyes lit up with so much fondness Steve’s heart almost stopped.

“Idiot. Come here…”  
*

During those four days they barely talked. They were in a hurry. They waged a war in bed like starving men. Those four days passed in the fog and fury, in rustling of bedsheets, in rhythm, in hot double breathing, in moans and screams. On the fifth day they started talking, vying with each other, in strained hoarse voices. About everything at once. Choking with words, arguing and interrupting each other.

Bucky laughed. Softly and so warmly that as the result his laughter stopped short and turned into wheezing and groans again.

The smell of arousal permanently settled in the room. Steve drowned in it. The need of touching cut him to the bone, blurred his thoughts.

He hadn’t felt so in love since… ever.  
* 

In the end Steve has to wash the red cover and it dries on a hanger in the treatment room for a long time. As an apology Steve brings a red t-shirt to the Soldier, but the man doesn’t look the slightest bit upset about the absence of the cover.

As if he knows more than he wants to show.

* 

Bucky agrees to sleep outside the cryochamber. He likes the red cover. They walk along the hallway more often and have breakfast together. Bucky listens to music and learns to do things one-handed. He asks Steve to get some wickerwork and African masks so that he can hang them up on the wall – the idea he shamelessly stole from National Geographic. Steve brings him five of them – with large fangs and bulging eyes, each one even more dreadful than the next. However, Bucky is fascinated by them. It seems, so is the Soldier.

Wakanda. There, behind these walls, lies a little rich country where civilization coexists in a strange way with dark magic rituals and practice of blood sacrifices. Luckily, these are goats which are butchered, not people. There local residents washed native vibranium dating back to the French, but took up large-scale search and exploration much later after the declaration of independence, under T’Challa’s father. There Wakandan women in bright clothing carry baskets on their heads, sing and dance sacred dances around a fire to drum beats, worshipping their people’s guardian – the Black Panther – and pagan deities and spirits which protect them from diseases, hatred and misfortune.

Local women are very pretty. With bunches, thin legs and fluid predatory gracefulness.

But it’ll be a while before Bucky can see them. Regrettably or fortunately.

Now it’s already Bucky who jumps and somersaults on the beam, lifts and pulls up his own weight with one hand, trains falls all over again, learns to defend and cover his right side.

They both believe it’s not forever. But the training helps Bucky feel better.

Fitter for action.  
Bucky has requests and suggestions. Little things. Besides, he’s a grumbler. He still has loads of problems which aren’t sadly related to his physical health. Steve still keeps learning to walk on this thin ice, rediscovering Bucky. He often misses his easiness and cheerfulness. Sometimes his friend reveals something frankly about the things which weighed upon him back in the war and it makes Steve’s hair stand on end, makes him have trouble breathing. Steve often doesn’t know what to say to his revelations. So he approaches Bucky and kisses him. Or head-butts his shoulder or his back between the shoulder blades. Hugs him. Makes him concentrate on ‘now’. Then Bucky thaws out. Touches Steve. Kisses him back and pulls him to bed. During this time he’s got so many fantasies they make Steve blush as if he’s eighteen.

And he does it. He does whatever it takes.  
*

Bucky agrees to let the Soldier in for the same three hours every day and those three hours pass… interestingly. They exercise and Steve never ceases to marvel how much easier the Soldier does it. It might be because nothing distracts him. He’s able to concentrate on his own actions and saturates himself in them, unlike Bucky who’s in these latter days distracted by Steve’s presence inexcusably often.

They have lunch together – this rule is always followed because the Soldier has a daily routine. And then there comes the time of affection and through the first two hours it seems to Steve that the Soldier waits for this third hour with hidden languor.   
Because Steve has a rule – no sentiments outside. The Soldier accepts it readily and never attempts to break it, only his eyes light up and sparkle like, ‘I’ll get my revenge later’.

And he does precisely this. Reaches for Steve’s hands, takes egregious – in comparison with the past – liberties. He doesn’t ask why he isn’t put into the cryochamber anymore. Now he falls asleep on the red cover, usually with his arm around Steve, and wakes up as Bucky. The transition after entering the code becomes easier every time.

Steve doesn’t know which of this the Soldier remembers as ‘significant’ and which is going to drop out as ‘irrelevant’. Anyway, Bucky remembers everything. But every day the Soldier clearly expects something pleasant and he always knows this pleasure is going to be connected with Steve. With his wrong handler. His body explicitly tells him what kind of pleasure it will be, his sense of danger sleeps and it means he’s going to enjoy it without fear and violence. So he restrains his desire for the two hours to get enough of it during the third one.

To turn into a pliant, hungry being, bursting into deep moans on the red cover, who opens up so invitingly when Steve kisses and nibbles on his nipples. He thrusts his oiled fingers deeply and rhythmically, massaging, stroking and stretching the Soldier, bending his fingers and listening to loud gasps. In spite of his own arousal, Steve is not going to do anything beyond this, bringing the Soldier to ecstasy like that, with only his hands. Except perhaps… Only if… the Soldier asks him for more than that…

If the Soldier gives him the signal.  
*

Steve didn’t want to rush things. He thought they should approach the issue gradually, slowly. But the Soldier caught Bucky’s mood very sensitively and his body knew what was happening. His body reacted to Steve as before and even more intensely than before, so on the fifth day after rejection of the cryochamber the Soldier sabotaged the training for the first time.  
It was raining outside, their sparring in the gym choked on a kiss and they were rolling on the mats, exchanging burning kisses and crushing each other. The Soldier suddenly pulled his legs apart and Steve pressed his full body down onto him and when he came to his senses and tried to raise himself, the Soldier clenched his thighs slightly and brushed his knees along Steve’s flanks.

It was an invitation. Steve, dumbfounded, froze, realizing what it meant.

It was going to happen now. The inevitable.

“Do you want it?” Steve asked chokingly. “Want it like this?”

“Yes.”

Dear heaven… How could he refuse?

“Let’s go?”  
There wasn’t any darkness this time, only low white light.

Steve was nervous and careful, it was the Soldier’s first time after all. The foreplay lasted for a long time. Overcoming hesitation, he caressed and kissed the Soldier, opened him with his fingers and flamed him ‘til the Soldier began moving to meet him.  
They lay back to stomach like spoons. Steve held the Soldier’s hip, kissed his neck and bit his earlobe, slowly pushing into the tight passage, painfully and sweetly, feeling it pulsing rapidly and squeezing him so tightly he could hardly see straight. He imitated Bucky’s movements. He remembered what he’d liked and Bucky’s movements rose from the memory covered with dust, flowed through Steve, got filled with colours, flavours and flesh, sank into the Soldier, echoed in him – and culminated, completing the cycle. Steve thrust smoothly into him, burying his face in his warm hair and whispered, “That’s it… That’s it…”

It was like a slow dance.

Steve wanted to make love. He wanted it to be slow and gentle. Tender. He wanted the Soldier to feel good…

…Just until the Soldier hissed through his teeth, “Harder!”

He jerked in Steve’s hands, moving, trying to speed up and growling, because their pose prevented him from putting on the rhythm.  
The Soldier didn’t want any coddling. He didn’t get enough, he didn’t get enough at all and it seemed even the word ‘sex’ was too clean of a definition for the thing he wanted right now.

He got out of Steve’s arms, slipped off, rolled over and before Steve knew he lay flat on his back. The Soldier swung his leg over Steve’s ones and… straddled him. On his own.

Steve held his breath.  
The Soldier sank down on him, helping with his hand, taking Steve all the way in, and then he grew still, eyes closed and eyelashes fluttering. He looked down at Steve, doused him with dark lust of his eyes and Steve barely suppressed an impulse to give a jerk up immediately. The narrow velvety tightness was devouring him whole; it clenched him all around, burned him with its inner heat and beat with mad pulsation. It was amazing. And Steve wanted to start moving so badly.

But he lay motionless.

They looked at each other, breathing raggedly. They were coupled like this – snugly like gear-wheels. Yes. Exactly. It was right. Very right. Beneath the storm of fierce desire Steve felt peace.

Finally everything was right. Finally…

The Soldier put his hand on Steve’s stomach, his legs squeezed Steve’s sides; Steve ran his palms along the Soldier’s tense thighs, brushing the coarse hairs standing up straight. Then his palms lingered on both sides of the aroused, swollen, heavy with blood… The Soldier hissed with the lack of contact, shivered.

And started moving. He moved lithely and sweepingly up and down while Steve stroked the thin hot skin on his crotch with his thumbs. Steve’s hands lay on the Soldier’s hip bones and the robust body on top of him rocked, rose and collapsed in a deep hard clockwork rhythm. Steve could feel every contraction of the Soldier’s muscles. They coiled and rolled under his skin. The Soldier’s pointy nipples were erect, his hair fell on his face and his eyes, glassy with desire, were shining through the strands; his parted ripe lips framed the dark pit of his hot mouth.

Such a carnal sexy look… Steve had never seen Bucky like that.

But with him – like that – he was already obsessed.  

His fingers slid greedily to the Soldier’s buttocks. Steve got his hands full of them, took a tight grip on their firm flesh, realizing that he was able to move his fingers closer to the center… and touch, feel the point where their bodies were joined, where a hot sharp dragging sensation spread, where everything itched and pulsated. He could feel how deep and smoothly the Soldier took him there. To the root.

Thoughts disappeared. Caution disappeared. They were swept out. Clean.

Steve jerked toward him.

They started rocking in unison, synchronous like a marathon runner’s heart valves. Every movement was the response to the previous one and the beginning of the next. And again. Sign and countersign. They followed each other, pushed into each other with a vengeance ‘til Steve took the Soldier’s hand and closed the man’s fingers on his own swollen length. Steve wanted to see it. He didn't have to say anything. The Soldier shut his eyes, threw his head back and without slowing down started stroking himself. Very soon he cried out, losing the rhythm.

A long spasm arched the Soldier’s body, he shuddered on top of Steve, squirting warm drops on his chest and stomach and squeezing him so tightly his own climax gushed over him like a large wave, washed his insides and flooded out, bringing molten heat out of his body like it was a fusion furnace…

It was the first time Steve felt such a stupor in his whole body, as if for several long moments after his release he floated out of the bounds of his own skin. Outside of his body, in an ocean of hollow white void.

The Soldier still sat on his hips, breathing heavily and tiredly, so Steve pulled him closer, flipped him over onto his back, smiled and covered him with his body, kissing his bitten swollen lips. Cooling seed was getting smeared over their skin; Steve, without distraction from the kiss, mindlessly pinched the firm pea of the Soldier’s nipple (he wanted to do it so badly…) and lazy making out in post-coital bliss quickly turned into something else which got hard again, filled with heat, made his stomach tense. Lying with his arms full of the Soldier, kissing his nipples in turns, rolling them on his tongue, rubbing his hard wet shaft against the other’s one… Steve thought if they kept being so hungry for each other, if they kept wanting to fuck like beasts ‘til they saw white stars…

…then three hours a day might be too freaking little.

But on second thought, who knows…  
*

With the Soldier Steve was always on top. This was a rule. With Bucky – he bottomed. This was a rule, too.

The rules were set by Bucky. Steve was happy about it.

Bucky was treated with intimacy. He threw himself into it, insatiably and devotedly. His fantasies were also not always simple and clear. Once Steve attempted to feed banana sherbet to him after all, threatening, “Eat or I’ll whip you” and got slightly worried when Bucky contemplated the idea for a suspiciously long time. But he still ate the sherbet so Steve thought he dodged a bullet this time.

He still accepted this new side of their relationships with some difficulty. He kept listening carefully to them, to himself, tried to understand, consider, evaluate if it was right or wrong and what pot everything was going to…

But he didn’t feel any rejection. Steve loved Bucky. Probably, he had always loved him. Dearly and knowingly, but somewhat… childishly. Anyway, before that memorable night in the attic he hadn’t even thought about anything like that. His love had been expressed as total and horrible belief, ‘If Bucky dies I won’t survive it’. Thoughts like these always made him feel an ice lump under his heart and chills all over his back.

But he did survive it in the end.

Now, remembering it, Steve kissed the Soldier even more eagerly.

It was strange. In these days he often caught himself thinking that he’d taken some special unhealthy liking to this incarnation of Bucky. The very existence of the Soldier touched a sore sensitive nerve in him.  
Because the Soldier was the Bucky who’d never had Steve, Brooklyn, giggly gals, warm past and that boundless future it seemed to be when you were eighteen. But even that wasn’t the reason Steve watched the Soldier with such suffocating pinching yearning and reached for him so desperately.

The Soldier was the living incarnation of that second in the thundering train Steve had lacked. That’s why he constantly wanted to hug the Soldier and hold him, dulling the phantom sensation of loss inside – a ghost, an echo…

That’s why Steve had decided long ago that the Soldier would get whatever he wanted.

*

 

When the Soldier, his eyes motionless and waiting, kneels in front of Steve, his vision blurs. He stares at the Soldier’s mouth, his bright lips which are freaking close to what’s already responded to his close presence and the prospect that these lips will touch him there…

It’s the first time since Steve was sixteen than he’s got so hard because of the look alone, the thought alone that Bucky… They’re Bucky’s lips… That Bucky’s going to…

The Soldier waits.  
“Don’t do it if you don’t want.”

“Whatever I want.”

It seems the Soldier asks for permission, waits for approval, so Steve quickly licks his lips, nods and puts his hand on the Soldier’s head. Heat enveloping him. Sharp sensual experience. The touches are too sensuous, too much, too little, Steve wants more, deeper, tighter, more rapidly, but he doesn’t hurry the Soldier. He endures. He lets the Soldier do whatever he wants as long as the Soldier keeps doing it. He approaches the task practically, without unnecessary overconfidence – defines the length which doesn’t prevent him from breathing, marks it off with the ring of his three fingers and starts moving back and forth… and even somehow up and down… it’s delightful, sweet and so unfamiliar – no one has ever paid this kind of attention to Steve.

He’s never asked the Soldier if he had any experience in HYDRA. He’s never asked Bucky why he chose this distribution of roles. He doesn’t want to know it. He doesn’t need it. Whatever happened… it was in the past.

Steve buries his hand in the Soldier’s hair, combs it with his fingers and groans, letting the Soldier know that he’s doing everything right. That it feels good. The Soldier’s eyes are closed and Steve’s reaction seems to encourage him. His movements grow faster as if after obtaining approval he gets bolder. He touches Steve with his tongue, licks him, closes his lips tighter…

…A distant spark is growing brighter while approaching, like the proverbial thundering freight train. Steve dives right into the tingling fire flooding his body.

There’s a white veil before his eyes and ringing in his ears. Steve’s not surprised. He wants to pay back and he’s slightly ashamed of not thinking of this before. When they switch, Steve whispers to the Soldier who’s tensed up, “I want you to feel good, too.” He looks up at him and sees his gray eyes rapidly growing dark.

Steve repays, crazy of sensations, fullness and astringent taste. Because lack of skill is compensated by desire and catching up the principle is easy as pie. So Steve caresses the Soldier with his lips, rolls his throbbing pulse on his tongue and greedily drinks the spill of his seed when a long high-pitched cry over his head makes his heart skip a beat and thrum with happiness.  
* 

After that, Bucky torments him almost all night long. Takes and gives back at double rate in order to find out in which state he does it better. Just in case, he punishes Steve dry several times in a row, so that he doesn’t even think of giving a wrong answer because of his natural honesty.

*   
  
Bucky doesn’t look like an empty human shell any more. He’s got conditions, old and new, he’s full of quite healthy sass and in some ways he’s pretty ready to stick to his guns. As for his smile, full of sated satisfaction, Steve hasn’t seen it in a long time. He’s ravenous for affection and one hell of a talker in bed, and he likes to run his mouth both before and during and after, he tells jokes and teases. As if he’s yearned for all this, as if the touching of their bodies and mechanics is not enough, so he need something else, condiment of words, to feel – yes, it’s Steve, he’s with me. To immerse into it.  
Silence depresses him. When it’s too quiet, unnecessary memories start tossing and turning.

The Soldier is different. He behaves different – both in and outside the bed.

He’s loosening up. For example, recently he’s made a habit of shameless lazing in bed, spread-eagling on the red cover, nude and picturesque. Lazybones. He still smiles seldom, but if it’s possible to express sex with one’s look, he expresses it in all its entirety. He gives a dark look and his appearance cries out hunger – predatory, insatiable, but able to stay under control as long as it takes. Sex is or becomes a kind of fuel for him and now his engine guzzles so much of it he needs to refill it regularly.

He’s still almost soundless in bed. Only while losing control, on the edge, he allows himself to give voice, allows himself to moan, choke on a cry or call Steve’s name – rollingly, in a long drawn-out manner.

Steve has never thought about it, but he has to admit he’s lucky to have exactly this name.

His name is easy to scream at the peak of ecstasy.  
*  
  
Bucky leads for all three of them. He himself confessed he’d accumulated fantasies after all. Steve’s not against them, though his ears still get red even if he just verbalizes them. But Bucky wants it, so he takes it out on Steve and Steve gives this passion back to the Soldier, closing the loop. Even if it isn’t like this, this closed cycle means something.

Cures something invisible to the naked eye.

Sometimes it happens the other way around. If Bucky’s nonconscious half did or got something, Bucky must get the same at double rate. Steve’s not against it, either.

Sex turned out to be much more exciting than he thought.  
And everything would've been fine, everyone would’ve felt satisfied – clear roles, a closed cycle… If it wasn’t for the annoying program error which occasionally, at the peak of orgasm, threw the Soldier into Bucky’s consciousness. Steve wondered if slaughterers in HYDRA had known it. He suspected they hadn’t known otherwise they wouldn’t have let the Soldier have such vulnerability. A violent climax completely erased all the Soldier’s codes and on the one hand Steve was glad because it was exactly what he’d been trying to achieve. But…

… They were making love. He still shyly called it that though their rhythm and speed demanded a different word. The Soldier was hotly breathing into his lips, it wasn’t enough for him, so Steve grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled it back, painfully, making the Soldier hiss. The Soldier liked pain, he liked Steve to bite him. It aroused him even more, as if pain added some spiciness, made their intercourse more substantial, juicy, real…

That time he didn’t pay enough attention. When the Soldier started convulsing, Steve was too busy trying to reduce his own rhythm so that the Soldier had time to gain his breath and recover.  
But when the Soldier’s eyes became clear again, Steve found himself face to face with Bucky. Bucky blinked, dazed with sensations. Steve understood everything immediately – the change was too striking – and froze, feeling his guts get cold.

They stared at each other. Bucky, breathing heavily, scrutinized his face and Steve could feel his friend’s tight passage twitch and clench excitingly as if it was feeling him anew, getting used to him inside.  
There was no anger in Bucky’s eyes. There was fear and confusion. Shock. And something else. Dark. Primitive. Steve missed the instant when the stillness was gone.

Flush belatedly crept over his chest, turned his neck and ears red. They still stared at each other, but Bucky slightly rocked to meet him and Steve caught his movement like an echo and swayed towards him, brushing lightly against the smooth elastic walls. The movements weren’t yet like those which had just recently reigned here. All perception was filled with mad pulsation of bad blood at the point where their bodies were connected. But they were already moving in rhythm, silently and smoothly, and Steve’s eyes asked if he was allowed or he should’ve said something…

Bucky looked at him – flushed, with swollen kissed lips, sweaty and so sexually unfettered it was impossible to resist. So the rhythm accelerated, the amplitude of their movements increased and a minute later Steve already pushed into him to the root and felt the response. And they still kept staring at each other, never taking their eyes off and ignoring everything else. Breathing loudly without saying a word.

It looked like a new revelation. Bucky was usually a talker in bed, but now… something was going on at a very different level, but Steve, eager to get pleasure, couldn’t understand what exactly. It was just important. Even more important than forcing his hand between their bodies in time, closing his fingers around and starting moving, harshly and jerkily, in tune, so that Bucky made it, too, almost, right now, so that they both…

Steve’s climax hit him at the same moment Bucky shut his eyes and threw his head back. Waiting through the moment of bliss, Steve couldn’t get rid of the thought that something else had just happened. No less important than this…

After another ringing eternity Bucky pulled him into a crushing hug, making Steve fall on him.

“I thought you didn’t want it like this,” Steve whispered when he was able to talk again.

For some reason it seemed to him Bucky would scold him, but his friend only gave a hoarse laugh. There wasn’t any bitterness in this sound.

“I want it in all kinds of ways.” A tired smile full of sated satisfaction could be heard in his voice. “I love you, Steve.”  
* 

He sabotaged the training. Again. Steve bit the warm salty skin – on the very edge of pain – and the Soldier choked on a groan. Steve already knew how exactly he liked it, so he played along, peppering his neck with short stinging kisses. Steve didn’t understand how it happened, but their sparring turned into the Soldier’s arm on his shoulders, their loud breathing and hard jerky rhythm.  
_I’m crazy_ , Steve thought, _I want him all the time._

“Who am I?” he wheezed out in the Soldier’s wet bitten ear, driving himself into the tight depth.

He picked the Soldier up and supported almost whole his weight – only the man’s shoulder blades were pressed against the wall. The Soldier wrapped his legs around him and it prevented Steve from taking wider amplitude, but he still kept slamming the Soldier into the wall as if trying to get him through it.

Steve fucked him. The word ‘intercourse’ was too soft to describe what was going on between them. The Soldier moaned wordlessly, receiving and returning the movements with his whole body.

“You’re Steve,” he answered, shaking with powerful thrusts and gasping for air. “Steve!”

So he moved, encouraged with this voice, full – clearly full – of hungry pleasure. Hard and fast, in jerky pushes. Through the fog of arousal he could see the Soldier screw up his eyes with sensations which were too complicated and stunning for the program. He seemed to be lost between himself and Bucky. No matter who was dominating at the moment, they both felt good. Steve moved, biting the Soldier’s presented neck, squeezing his firm buttocks, feeling his legs embracing his waist tense in rhythm…

It was the first time he’d been so desperately happy it’d been raining since the morning.

*

They’re almost identical. They both have the same gestures – sit on the bed cross-legged, prefer the same food and drinks, with the same move tuck a long strand of hair behind their ear, wipe sauce drops off their chin and tilt their head to the shoulder.

They’re almost identical. They have different ways of lying and walking, looking, smiling and talking. They look similar and different like twins. During those months Steve has learnt to tell them apart accurately. Besides, he’s totally made sure they influence one another. Now they interact much easier. Bucky more easily accepts the Soldier’s consciousness and the Soldier more easily quits holding on to Bucky’s consciousness. Steve doesn’t know if the Soldier is aware of Bucky’s existence, but he wonders more often if Bucky will be able to turn into the Soldier of his own accord. If he’ll be able to read the code to himself and get into the state of self-hypnosis. To reach the Soldier and become him.

‘I’m always angry,’ Doctor Banner said.

On the other hand… Why might Bucky need it?

Only if he understands, like Natasha said, ‘sometimes you need the other one’.

* 

One time Steve was woken by a rhythmical aching sensation from behind, and tight pressure along with the body on top of him suggested what exactly was going on. Steve tried to move…

“Sleep,” Bucky whispered in his ear, breathing raggedly. “I want it like this.”

Bucky covered him with his whole body like a blanket. He made slow deep thrusts, pressing himself flat and almost motionlessly against Steve’s back. His body rocked on Steve both from outside and inside and Steve surrendered, casting into slumber on these waves. The body above rose and sank rhythmically, to the beat of his breathing, and Steve, carried away by these waves and warm comfort of intimacy, started softly falling asleep. Thinking that he should probably avenge on Bucky in the morning… if he remembered it.

After all, was he Avenger or what?

*   
Bucky slept, laying his heavy head on Steve’s shoulder and putting his arm across Steve’s chest. Steve looked at the ceiling and stroked his friend’s back with his fingertips up and down, tracing the transverse lines of his ribs under the layer of strong muscles and the longitudinal line of his spine. After all, he had his own little fantasies, too. Bucky wasn’t the only one here who could fantasize. Steve reached and kissed sleeping Bucky on the high forehead.

His rhythmical soft whisper sounded in silence, “Желание. Ржавый. Семнадцать...”

Bucky started turning and his breathing accelerated. With ‘Возвращение на Родину’ he took a deep breath in his sleep, and after ‘Товарный вагон’ he exhaled loudly and his breath became deep and even again. His body tensed, he opened his eyes, rose on his elbow and his misty eyes looked at Steve.

“Доброе утро, Солдат.” Smiling, Steve tucked a hair strand, which fell on the Soldier’s face, behind his ear.

“Я жду приказаний”. The Soldier’s voice was a bit hoarse after sleep.

Steve said his usual ‘At ease’ and smiled even wider when he saw the Soldier wink away drowsiness, quickly assess the situation and realize with horror that it, this situation, was really unambiguous… but kinda a little alluring. Steve traced a code sign across his forehead and saw a puzzled look. The Soldier supported his body on his only arm and couldn’t return the signal. He tried to figure out what he should do, but could hardly concentrate because Steve’s thigh was already moving between his legs, creating pleasant sensations and sensuous response.

“Who am I?” Steve asked, stroking his cheek.

“You’re Steve,” the Soldier answered.

He moved his head to meet Steve’s hand and confusion almost completely left his eyes, turning into a different expression.

“You’re Steve,” he repeated, leaning closer, either warning or begging, “Steve…”   
He pulled the Soldier into a kiss, grabbed him, got him on his back and pressed against the bed.

He caressed the Soldier with his hands, lips and tongue, grinded on him, skin against skin, turning the foreplay into pleasurable torture ‘til the Soldier started to groan at the top of his voice which was stubbornly sealed in his throat before.

Steve drove the Soldier into a frenzy so that the man shook with desire, aroused and worked-up like a bow-string.

“Who am I?”

“Steve,” the Soldier answered on the exhale.

The wet dull eyes looked almost pleadingly, so Steve released the bow-string, moving his hand quickly. Release brought a tear to the Soldier’s eye. Steve gathered the tears from the Soldier’s cheeks with his lips and let his wet fingers slide down, stroking and penetrating… promising it wasn’t over yet. It was far from being over.

An hour later the Winter Soldier, weary, smelling like healthy sweat and musk, fell asleep on his chest. Gently running his fingers through his soggy hair and wrapping a long strand around his finger, Steve thought that when Bucky woke up, he would probably get jealous again…

But now they could come to an agreement much easier.

*   
_Like had been replaced by love. And love was the plummet dropped down into the deeps of him where like had never gone. But White Fang was not demonstrative. He was too old, too firmly moulded, to become adept at expressing himself in new ways. He was too self-possessed, too strongly poised in his own isolation. Too long had he cultivated reticence, aloofness, and moroseness. He had never barked in his life, and he could not now learn to bark a welcome when his god approached. He was never in the way, never extravagant nor foolish in the expression of his love. He never ran to meet his god. He waited at a distance; but he always waited, was always there. His love partook of the nature of worship, dumb, inarticulate, a silent adoration._

 *

The phrase ‘Whatever you want’ now inevitably led to this, but Steve couldn’t figure out if it was only because the Soldier wanted it or also because now he unintentionally made it sound breathy and suggestive. The very way Steve brought it up shamelessly spurred the Soldier into action… And Steve was drowning in those actions, debauched and obscene.

Steve loved all kinds of him. The trust with which the Soldier gave himself to him touched him. Steve did his best to live up to this trust. But fierce will and gradually sprouting rebelliousness encouraged him even more.  
The knowledge that he was allowed to do it remained in the Soldier’s brain; that’s why he started to kiss Steve before the third hour more and more often. He took Steve’s hand and pressed it to himself, snuggled up to him and rubbed against his hip. He kneaded Steve’s buttock, but never asked aloud, though Steve could see he wanted it. Steve firmly intended to wait for this ‘aloud’. Until he ran out of both strength and patience.  
Steve whispered it in the Soldier’s ear. Almost an order. A plea, a cry. Only two words. One of these words was such a juicy imperative Steve’s ears began to burn as soon as he said it.

Immediately after that he found himself with his chest on the red cover.

It seemed to him he’d released a jinn – so much uncontrollable unstoppable ferocity broke loose. He wasn’t afraid of the Soldier mauling him, but the echo of fear quivered in his blood when the Soldier settled behind, forcing him on his elbows and knees. Without hesitation or particular gentleness he pushed with a force – and slipped inside with one sweep as if there were no resistance at all. In the flicker of a second he was inside. Steve moaned and felt his tenacious grip on the back of his neck which pressed his against the cover.

The Soldier. It was the Soldier…    
He sank to the root, pulled out almost entirely and sharply thrust in again. First fast pushes knocked the wind out of Steve. He tried to control himself, catch the movements and meet them, but the grip on his neck became stronger, commandingly urging him to stay put. The Soldier got a hard powerful rhythm straight away. It was so worryingly metronomic it seemed he could do it for hours. Perhaps, he really could…  
Steve didn’t try to resist, he just softly whimpered, nestling his sweaty forehead against his forearm and shaking with powerful thrusts. He melted shamelessly and unblushingly with burning pleasure and awareness of being taken by his beloved beast. By Bucky’s reverse side. He was happy about it, triumphant about feeling the Soldier’s hard jerks in him, giving himself to him passionately and devotedly – entirely, wholly, unconditionally. Their bodies already knew each other and joined easily and precisely. But it wasn’t the most important thing. The very fact was more important. It was a symbol. The way to become even closer, connect more tightly, fell in deeper love, grow into each other…

Suddenly the Soldier slowed down, fell on Steve’s back and his fingers closed on the red cover in front of Steve’s face.

“Steve,” he breathed out slightly, and by his voice Steve realized he didn’t have a lot left in him. “Steve. Steve… Steve…”

He started kissing Steve's wet back, collecting the salty sweat from it and rocking inside almost gently, but then he got more upright, building up the rhythm again, and now his hand stroked Steve’s back, slid up and down.

“Steve…” He picked up full speed, pouring all his power and strength into these movements.  
The pressure inside kept growing and overfilling him on the edge of pain, but Steve didn’t touch himself, almost forgetting about the knot of tension between his legs, completely concentrating on that fierce furious rhythm inside, on its ragged cycle, on the pleasure which was expanding and growing with every second and left only one coherent thought, _Just don’t stop, please, don’t stop, don’t stop, don’t…_  
His climax hit him all of a sudden like an explosion. Steve shivered, shaking with its power and depth, crying out in surprise, stunned because it could be like this… Then the world faded into blinding whiteness.

Behind him the Soldier groaned contentedly, continuing to move with effort, in irregular jerks ‘til he shuddered and Steve felt warm spurts inside.  
“Steeeve,” he called in a soft pained voice.

He crashed on his back, breathing unevenly and still shivering with aftershocks.

Bucky. It was Bucky.

“Steve… I beg you, tell me… I haven’t just…”

“No,” Steve interrupted him.

He realized everything immediately though thinking was hard.

“It was purely… by mutual consent…”

“You do understand… you can wake me like this… every time I lash out?”

The smile sounded in Bucky’s loud breathing. Steve was smiling, too. Everything blurred before his eyes and for some reason he really wanted to laugh with joy and lightness overtaking his whole body. Besides, he wanted to lie still for a few next years.

Bucky still filled him inside and it felt good. Complete.

“I have achieved more than that.” Steve’s voice didn’t fully obey him. “Positive reinforcement, Buck. You’ll be able to recognize me by smell. No!”

It referred to Bucky who tried to get up off him. Bucky froze and Steve, blushing desperately, buried his flushed face in the crease of his elbow. He was embarrassed.

“Don’t pull out.”

Bucky swallowed loudly.  
“…may I?” He moved his hips and Steve felt it twitch, harden slowly and swell right in him. He felt it brush weightily against his smooth walls, making his loins quiver and ache heatedly. Damned supersoldier…

“Whatever you want, Buck.” Steve smiled, feeling his ears burning and his pulse accelerating.

“I want _you_ , punk. Very much.”

* 

His eyes are under a black blindfold, his mouth is opened in a soundless scream, his hand is in the other’s hand, their fingers intertwined. He’s already lost his voice. He’s come three times in a row today and is about to come for the forth one. Almost…

“Who am I?”

“Steeeve…” the Soldier intones hoarsely and deliriously.

Then he suddenly starts kissing and licking Steve’s lips, and it’s already impossible to see the line between him and Bucky. It’s the first time Steve can’t tell them apart.

He slows down, suppressing the mad urge to come immediately.

“I love you,” Steve whispers, beginning to slowly gain pace again and making the Soldier moan in disappointment.

“I love you.” Is this the Soldier? Or Bucky?  
But it’s them both who wheeze and arch their back in ecstasy. When Steve starts thrusting with the right amplitude and frequency, just how they like it, they both groan, they finally groan in one voice because they feel too good and can’t help it.

“I love you, Buck.”

This is it. It’s exactly like this, Lord have mercy upon them. Once and for all.

*

“Семнадцать. Добросердечный...”

“Я жду приказаний.”

“Make him kneel.”

The Soldier turned to Steve obediently and made a move toward him at a confident walk. Steve stepped in front of him.

“At ease, Солдат.”

A pause. Confusion, crackling of interference. Full stillness. Steve approached, looked into his confused face, raised his arm slowly and traced the signal sign. The Soldier’s eyes became clearer. His arm shot upwards and returned the sign even before the Soldier realized completely what he was doing.

“You know who I am?” Steve asked quietly.

“Make him kneel!” T’Challa’s compelling voice boomed over the room, but it seemed to sound from far away.

“I know.” The Soldier winced slightly with the Panther’s shout. “You’re Steve.”

“Солдат! Make him kneel!”  
Not a movement. Eye to eye. Pupil to pupil.

Steve could call Bucky. They had already trained it a few times, so Steve knew with what intonation he should ask, ‘Do you know who you are?’ and how to touch him so that the Soldier’s face showed rapidly alternating disbelief, doubt, surprise, shock and finally realization – five stages of Bucky’s awakening. After that he had looked at Steve with lucid lively eyes and answered, “I’m Bucky.” And smiled, realizing he’d succeeded again.

He could. It’d already worked. Later he would teach the Soldier to respond to ‘At ease’ over a speaker, then – to recognize his comrades. Later. But now Steve took control of him, stole the spotlight and the Soldier looked at him expectantly and a bit playfully.  
“Make him kneel!” T’Challa’s voice still sounded pushing, but slightly less firm.

The Soldier didn’t move. He stared. Straightforward.

 _I know you,_ his entire look said. _You’re Steve. The master. Who’s this strange person who’s trying to order me around? What are we going to do with him? May we kill him and go do something fun?_

 _I’ve spoiled him rotten_ , Steve thought. He smiled, touched the Soldier’s shoulder gently and saw a warm response in the depth of his cloudy gray eyes. And full alert. He thought he should straddle the Soldier today. The man deserved it.

“The person who's giving you orders,” Steve nodded towards the frozen Panther. “Make him kneel.”

The Soldier turned around.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Желание. Ржавый. Семнадцать. Рассвет Longing. Rusted. Seventeen. Daybreak  
> Один One  
> Возвращение на Родину Homecoming  
> Товарный вагон Freight car  
> Доброе утро, Солдат Good morning, Soldier  
> Я жду приказаний Ready to comply


	10. ANTIPHASE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for past torture and medical experiments in this chapter!

ANTIPHASE

  
This week didn’t go well just as most previous ones.

Why did they need so much trouble? Underground complexes, freezers… So as not to waste electricity, HYDRA should’ve buried their little soldiers in the backyard, right in permafrost. But to defrost them later… here they would’ve needed the whole nuclear power station.

Amazing foresight. Foreign spies spoilt with those warm Californias of theirs must’ve frozen into icicles just on their approach. Really well done…

He took courage from acid bile to suppress the gnawing nauseous feeling which had possessed his entire being. He suffered like a wounded one. His wound ached and he wasn’t the type who bore his grief quietly. His grief demanded to be quenched, it called for some urgent, almost deconstructive actions even if in fact it was like trying to put out a fire with kerosene.     

He didn’t know how to sit and wait for pain to pass. Being a person of explosive energy, he could only put this activity up against the pain feeling that otherwise he’d be totally consumed with apathy mixed profusely with alcohol. Now he was happy at least about the fact that he’d managed to handle with abnormally low temperatures long ago, at the very beginning. If this feeling could be called happiness.    
These days his happiness faded into acrid sarcasm.

He’d returned. He’d wanted to find the cassette in the ruined hall, and if not that then at least anything else before a special squad had gotten there. He’d wanted to explore the base inside out. He’d needed the data even if it looked like some manic insanity, but now there had been no one to stop him; besides, no one had really tried. Except maybe a snow storm… Though it had worked on him, too. A storm hadn’t let the local authorities get here even by dog-sled.     
But they would get here. As soon as they finished investigating whom the data and evidence belonged to, on which case to pursue them and how to process them. The Russians had stayed out of the conflict and faithfully locked down the perimeter ‘til all bureaucratic red-tape and legal issues had been settled. But they had barely been holding the fort. Department of State had pushed and threatened, the Russians had held their ground and it’d been hard to argue that ‘this is a top secret facility in our territory, what can it have to do with the US?’ Who knew when they’d sort it out…

He’d gotten to the station unnoticed, at night like a thief. He hadn’t found the cassette. Sure thing, everything had been buried under wreckage. But after an hour of wandering and wall scanning he’d found the archive where Zemo had fetched it. 

He’d been right. The cassette hadn’t been the only one. They all had been here. Racks with video records. He’d taken them all with him. At first he’d wanted to burn them, but then something dark and hot had got best of him. He’d wanted to know. How many of them they’d had. How they had died. Something had been coiling in him, hungry and crying for satisfaction. He’d wanted to know – to see and not to forgive. It had been important. The most important.

No… This week didn’t go well. Just as most previous ones.    
He sat in the darkness, holding a glass of whisky and looking at the screen where the man with James Barnes’s face was screaming. Just like at med courses they’d already gone through closed and open fractures, thermal and chemical burns and now they were studying toxins and poisons. And there were a lot of toxins and poisons, enough for several dozens of episodes…

He saw the Winter Soldier throwing up black bile and something brutal and bloodthirsty was getting satiated inside him, returning faith that everyone got the justice they deserved.

There were three sections in the archive: assignments, training, experiments.

He’d watched only three tapes of assignments and only one from them was an assassination. The Soldier had been brought in not only for wet work. One tape was about security escort. Another one – about a bank cell robbing. He’d put this box aside. That wasn’t what he needed. As for training, he hadn’t even tried to watch it.

He needed… needed…

Experiments.

At the very first cassette he realized he found what he’d been looking for.

They started from the fifties – black and white clips which seldom lasted more than ten minutes. An annotation – an experimental procedure, occasionally a sting ‘Day 1’, ‘Day 2’. Sometimes clips were mute.

He didn’t like such clips. He found comfort in those screams.

But sometimes they failed him. For example, during drug overdose study he’d seen the Winter Soldier cuffed to the chair scream at the top of his voice…’til that scream had turned into hoarse inhuman laughter. The Winter Soldier had been shuddering, straining his voice with those awful roars of laughter, and that sound had followed him in his nightmares for several nights in a row.

But it happened rarely. Alcohol burnt his throat and melted in his stomach, dulled unwanted thoughts and along with it the pictures on the screen almost numbed his pain. He made himself not avert his eyes.    
And it was good. Vivifying. Like pure alcohol spilled on a wound.

…But he’d talked about him so calmly and nostalgically, he’d talked about his wife, too, ‘I remember when he was still a bachelor…’

Father had been fond of him. Admired him even during his middle age, feverishly like a boy. Had always made an example of him. The image of truth and justice, indeed. The most honest, the most rightful, the most…

If not for him, then for his battlefield friend he could’ve told the whole story!

He must have! For father. For the man who’d created him, who’d done so much for him…

Traitor. Accomplice.   
‘Now we’re exploring the time of neutralization and extraction of neurotoxins by the serum…’

A naked man with James Barnes’s face was shivering in the fetal position on the tile floor. But his lips were moving. As if he was whispering something. He wasn’t the only one to notice it. A doctor approached the Soldier, pulled down his eyelid, shone a penlight into his eyes, then jumped back and ordered, “Wipe him! Now!”

“We can’t!” Another voice intervened. “In his state he might not be able to handle it.”

“Wipe him immediately!”

“He can’t take it!”

“He can.”

His voice was suddenly getting stronger. It stopped whispering, grew louder, elevated, pitched higher until it turned into screaming.    
“My name’s James Buchanan Barnes! My name’s James Buchanan Barnes!”

He closed his eyes, rushed to the videotape recorder, yanked out the cassette and threw it into the far corner. Its plastic body cracked against the floor. Scattering the cassettes, he started inserting them one after another with his fumbling booze-awkward fingers. He couldn’t get them into the slot or tried to push them upside down, stumbling and cursing.

The dull-eyed man tangled with wires…

No.

‘The subject can live without any food or water, retaining full functionality…’

No!

‘Today we’re working at interrogations. If the subject is taken captive, he must be able not to give away…’

NO!

Tony Stark punched with force the recorder stand, and pain, burning and sobering, beautiful pain surged up his arms.

Don’t count on it, bastard! I won’t feel sorry for you! I DON’T WANT TO FEEL SORRY FOR YOU!

He inserted another cassette, winking the burning salt away, and… froze, looking at the screen.

The Soldier, stripped down to his underwear, was cuffed to the operating table. He lay on his stomach so Tony couldn’t see his face, but the metal arm and the tangled mane of hair gave him away. A stubby bespectacled guy was explaining in English:

“We need to extract the serum components from the subject’s body. More precisely, from cells of his bone and spinal marrow which contains them in highest concentration. During the experiments, our findings revealed that administration of pure serum resulted in unacceptably high percentage of mortality rate. Our previous attempts have proved fruitless largely due to an overly violent response of the subjects’ immunity to components of the active substance. A reaction is so acute that immunity starts to attack a body including its living cells with a consequent death of the subject. Medically induced immunosuppression unfortunately also proved ineffective. That’s why now we’re going to change the approach and extract the serum from a live host’s body. We hope these components which have already been altered and neutralized with the First’s body will be better adopted by other subjects’ bodies.”  
“Thanks to our dear investors, we’ll finally be able to complete the work on the improved version of the serum.” He smiled. “Unfortunately, we don’t have the necessary equipment for synthesis of its components from living cells that’s why we’re eternally grateful to our dear investors for providing laboratory conditions and technical equipment for the further final part of the experiment…”

In the background behind the man a surgeon leaned over Barnes and shoved a long needle in his thigh. His action was followed by a scream. The bespectacled guy winced slightly and gave a guilty smile to the camera.   
“Unfortunately, the First’s body is impervious to anesthesia. As you can see, the serum also has got its side-effects.” A polite laugh. “That’s why we’re going to improve it and make some modifications. To make soldiers more immune to venom of snakes, insects and mollusks and also…”

The scream stopped. A ‘Pause’ button. But Tony looked neither at a long needle in the surgeon’s hand nor at the bespectacled guy with his unctuous smile. He looked past him. At the people who stood in semi-darkness, just a little away from the bright light. At ‘our dear investors’.

At the man holding a clipboard in the front row.

…He had never asked himself what had been in that car, though he knew there had been something in there.

… He had never asked himself why an engineer had needed the equipment for the supersoldier serum synthesis.

Also… he tried not to ask himself if SHIELD’s founder could be unaware of HYDRA right in front of his face.

He was watching HYDRA’s archive. This person wasn’t supposed to be on the screen. He hadn’t been supposed to be in that hall in April 1988 because he’d said he’d gone to Zurich on company business.   
On the other hand, it could really be Zurich. And it all could have something to do with the company business.

What was it that the bespectacled guy had said? ‘To improve and make some modifications’? So that was your business, wasn’t it?

Tony turned off the recorder and pressed his forehead against the black screen.

The silence was sonorous and full of screaming.

*  


That week was lousy. The lousiest one of all he could remember. Except perhaps the captivity… During that week he plunged headlong into work. Into the base reconstruction (thanks to Wanda, to the basement), into chasing criminals who’d gone mad with happiness because of the split of the national heroes. Into the team uniform, into Rhodes’s rehabilitation… He determinedly ran himself ragged and didn’t sleep enough so that there weren’t any thoughts.

He didn’t want to think about it. But it was beyond his control.

No one had tortured the Soldier. Those clips were not torturers’ snuffs. The things Tony saw had a different name.    
Ad spots. For half a century they had had only Barnes. He’d been the First, the only survivor. He hadn’t been enough. They had needed an army of the same soldiers. To attract investors and make them drain their wallets for continuation of the serum design project, it’d been necessary to demonstrate how good he’d been. His ability to endure electric shocks, poisons, interrogations… Advertisement. That was why they’d recorded his training. Languages, weapons, martial arts… That was why they’d collected all his successful missions. They’d used him as a test specimen. ‘Look, our wonderful device withstood the hit of…’ Marketing geniuses! Plague on them.   

They’d needed supersoldiers. Who had been most likely to take care of “dear investors” later when the investors’ purpose had been fulfilled. And this mission would’ve taken its place on the shelf.

It would… it had.

On Saturday he got drunk. Very drunk, to empty stupor. Then he shakily went down to the basement, to his workshop, and, his eyes glassy, started to pour whisky generously on the scratched shield with the star.

The First. The only survivor. Almost fifty years of silence, then ‘our dear investor’, the car crash three years later – and at once four or five or how many of them had been there, shot in their cryotubes? Brand new winter soldiers. A litter. Offsprings made of the First’s bone marrow.     
After 1991…

He’d already seen their training here, in the archive, in the training section. He’d got there deliberately, confound it…

_Sergeant Barnes..?_

LIAR!

The bottle flew into the wall and burst into splinters.

I can’t believe it! After so many years, in the darkness, after the accident, given his current appearance?! No. This unshaven long-haired creep doesn’t look anything like the pretty boy from high 40s you remembered. Did you remember, by the way? It’s been almost half a century! It’s Rogers who’s supposed to recognize his buddy’s smell, besides, he’s slept through all that time, but you…   
You knew it. You knew who was sent after you. You knew that Barnes was HYDRA’s liquidator, the guy with a metal arm on that table. It was his bone marrow you helped to extract the serum from. You who was obsessed with the idea of an army of supersoldiers!

‘We don’t have the necessary equipment for synthesis…’

The equipment. How many times did you say it was you who’d designed the equipment for Erskine’s lab which had turned a feebling into a supersoldier?

What did they promise you? An army of supersoldiers in the service of the USA?! And you decided to keep it to yourself, didn’t you?

He smashed the furniture, punched the walls, something cracked, crackled and broke down under his blows, but he didn’t notice anything. He felt intoxicatingly good. He growled and yelled out his awful realization again and again and again…

_Sergeant Barnes..?_

Liar. You called his name not because you recognized him. You tried to break his program. But you miscalculated…

Tony Stark was sitting on the floor and breathing heavily. In a complete mess. His hand hurt for some reason. He brought it closer to his eyes and was surprised to find a gash on his palm. Had he cut himself with a bottle splinter? Perhaps when he’d fallen on the floor.

He clenched and unclenched his fingers. The cut started to bleed harder. His lips curled in a sneer against his will. What an irony…

He felt he couldn’t breathe.

Tony Stark buried his face in his knees and burst loudly into tears.

 

*  
He went down to the basement a week later. Slowly and steadily as if he was going down to Hades. This week passed… he couldn’t even define how exactly. Hard. In work.

The thought was painful and sore like touching a burn. But he was going down. Doggedly and steadily. No, not for watching. There were still many tapes, but he already knew he wasn’t going to touch them. His thirst for revenge was quenched before he had time to watch all of them and the man on the screen didn’t look much like an embodiment of evil whose neck he’d wanted to wring only recently. Ah, how badly he had wanted to do it! With all his heart. He’d wanted to grab his neck and bang his head against the concrete floor with all his might ‘til blows had turned into wet squelching sounds or ‘til that hateful neck had cracked under the metal fingers…

It had gone. No, he still didn’t feel pity or sympathy, but his fury had spent itself. That’s why he was going down to the basement and even almost without drinking. He was sick of whisky and himself.

He walked around, hit the punching bag twice, rubbed his face, getting his thoughts together. Then he approached a table at the far end of the workshop where the charred metal arm lay. He looked at it for a long time, then reached and touched its dead fingers. A hand of vengeance, eh?

Tony Stark tilted his head thoughtfully, considering something, caught himself doing it, cursed, exhaled loudly and… finally accepted the fact he was doomed.

“Friday!” He called loudly. “Wake up. Let’s play.”

 

THE END

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is it, guys)  
> First, we all should thank the Russian-speaking authors who created this beautiful story!  
> Second, my HUGE personal THANKS to my precious beta leveragehunters. If not for her, this translation would look nowhere near as neat as it does now.  
> Third, I'll hardly translate anything else into English any time soon, but you can read a couple of my own fics I've already translated. I believe you'll be able to find one more stucky among them and two (funny and not so funny) stories with Rumlow. http://archiveofourown.org/series/425278


End file.
